Джеймс Хэрриот - The Lord God Made Them All

The region of the ileo-caecal valve was the textbook site, and I aimed for it first. But as I cut into the intestine and scraped the mucosa with my knife, I found only haemorrhages and small necrotic spots, some dark red, others yellowish.

Sometimes you found the real thing further along in the colon, and for a long time I snipped my way along the coils of bowel with my scissors without finding anything definite.

Here I was again. I was sure this was swine fever, but I couldn’t say so to the farmer. The Ministry insisted that theirs was the right of diagnosis, and until they issued confirmation I could say nothing.

There were the usual petechial haemorrhages in kidney and bladder, but not one typical ulcer.

I sat back on my heels. “Lionel, I’m very sorry, but I’D have to report this as a suspected case of swine fever.”

“Oh, ‘e?, that’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Yes … yes, it is. But we can’t be positive until the Ministry confirms it. I’m going to take samples and send them off to the laboratory in Surrey.”

“And can’t you do owt to cure them?”

“No, I’m afraid not. It’s a virus, you see. There’s no cure.”

“And how about t’others? Does it spread?”

I cringed at having to answer, but there was no point in playing the thing down. “Yes, it spreads like anything. You’ll have to take every precaution. Keep a tray of disinfectant outside this pen, and dip your boots if you have to go in. In fact, I would go in as little as possible. Feed and water them over the top, and always attend to the healthy pigs first.”

“And how about if me other pigs get it? How many are goin’ to die?”

Another horrible question. The books say the mortality rate is eighty to a hundred percent. In my experience it had been a hundred percent.

I took a long breath. “Lionel, they could all die.”

The roadman looked slowly over the rows of new concrete pens with their sows and litters, and the pigs rooting happily among the straw in the yard. I felt I had to say something, however lame.

“Anyway, it might not be what I fear. I’ll send these samples off to the lab and let you know what they say. In the meantime, get these powders into them, either in their food or by dosing.”

I stowed the loops of bowel in my car boot, then went round the piggery making notes of the different grades of pigs. Because another little purgatory lay ahead of me—the filling up of the forms. I have a blind spot where forms are concerned, and the swine fever form was a horrendous pink thing about two feet long, with closely packed questions on each side about how many sows and boars and un weaned pigs and weaned pigs and fattening pigs, and heaven help you if you got any of the numbers wrong.

That evening at Skeldale House I wrestled with this pink thing for a long time, then turned to the real horror—the packing of the sample of bowel. The Ministry provided a special little outfit for this purpose. At first sight it looked just like a flat square of corrugated cardboard, some pieces of grease-proof paper, several lengths of hairy string and a sheet of brown paper. However, on closer examination you found that the cardboard folded into a small square box. The instructions were very explicit. You didn’t just bung a piece of bowel into the box; you had to lay a three-feet portion lengthwise on the grease-proof paper, then fold the ends of the paper inwards and tie the whole thing up in one of the pieces of string.

However, there was a catch here, because among the swine fever kit were two stridently printed red and black cards saying, “Pathological Specimen. Urgent.” With spaces for the address of the infected premises and all kinds of things. These cards had holes in each end, and the string containing the bowel had to be threaded through these holes before the box was closed. The other card went on the outside.

I painstakingly went through the ritual, and as I finally fumbled the string through the holes in the outside card and tied the box in the brown paper, I fell back exhausted because this sort of thing took more out of me than calving cows.

It was then, just as I was staring with glazed eyes at the envelopes containing the form for Head Office and the one for Divisional Office, the cardboard creation packed at last, that I saw the other card lying on the table. I had forgotten to include it with the contents.

“Damn and blast it to hell!” I yelled. “I always do that! I bloody well always do that!”

Helen must have thought I might have had some kind of seizure because she hurried through to the dispensary where I was working.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

I hung my head and nodded weakly. “Yes, sorry. It’s just this damned swine fever.”

“Well, all right, Jim.” She looked at me doubtfully. “But try to keep your voice down. You’ll wake the children.”

In grim silence I dismantled the box, threaded in the card and reconstructed the outfit once more. I had done this so often, and, oh, how I hated it. I thought bitterly that if ever I wanted something to kill a quiet evening, I had only to do an S.F. report.

I took the thing to the station and sent it off, and in an attempt to ease my mind I turned to one of my veterinary bibles, Udall’s Practice of Veterinary Medicine. Even among those hallowed pages I found little comfort. The great man’s pronouncements only reconfirmed my suspicions. He was an American and he called it hog cholera, but everything he described reminded me of what I had seen on Lionel’s place. He talked about injection of serum to protect the healthy pigs, but I had tried that, and it just didn’t work. It would be more expense for Lionel, with nothing to show for it.

Within a few days I got the result. The Ministry was unable to confirm the presence of swine fever on these premises. On that day I also heard from the roadman.

“Them pigs is worse. Your powders have done no good, and I ‘ave another dead ’un.”

Again the dash out to the piggery and the postmortem examination, and this time, as I slit the intestine along its length, I really thought I had found something definite. Surely those ulcers were slightly raised and concentric. The Ministry must confirm it this time, and then, at least, we would know where we were.

I had another evening of form filling and another struggle with the cardboard box and the papers, but as I sent off the samples, I was very hopeful that my doubts would be resolved.

When the word came back that the Ministry was once more unable to confirm the disease, I could have cried.

I appealed to Siegfried. “What the hell are they playing at? Can you tell me how they ever do diagnose S.F. from these samples at the lab?”

“Oh, yes.” My partner looked at me gravely. “They take the length of bowel from the paper and throw it against the ceiling. If it sticks there it’s a positive, if it falls off it’s negative.”

I gave a hollow laugh. “I’ve heard that one before, and sometimes I feel like believing it.”

“But don’t be too hard on the Ministry boys,” Siegfried said. “Remember, they have to be dead sure before they confirm, and they’d look damn silly if they were wrong. Lots of things can look like S.F. You find necrotic ulcers in worm infestations, for instance. It’s not easy.”

I groaned. “Oh, I know, I know. I’m not blaming them, really. It’s just that poor old Lionel Brough is sitting on the edge of a precipice, and I can’t do anything to help him.”

“Yes, James, it’s a hell of a situation. I’ve been there and I know.”

Two days later Lionel rang to say he had another dead pig. This time I found more typical ulcers, and though I still had no idea what the Ministry would say, I knew exactly what I had to do. My brain seemed to have worked it out during the night hours because my decision was crystal clear.