Джеймс Хэрриот - All Creatures Great and Small

“Aye, ah know all about it.” He watched me gloomily as I injected the Coryne pyogenes toxoid into the cow’s neck. (Even now we are still doing this for summer mastitis because it is a sad fact none of the modern range of antibiotics has much effect on it.) “She’ll lose her quarter, won’t she, and maybe she’ll even peg out?”

I tried to be cheerful. “Well, I don’t think she’ll die, and even if the quarter goes she’ll make it up on the other three.” But there was the feeling of helplessness I always had when I could do little about something which mattered a great deal. Because I knew what a blow this was to the young man; a three-teated cow has lost a lot of her market value and this was about the best outcome I could see. I didn’t like to think about the possibility of the animal dying.

“Look, is there nowt at all I can do myself? Is the job a bad ’un do you think?” Terry Watson’s thin cheeks were pale and as I looked at the slender figure with the slightly stooping shoulders I thought, not for the first time, that he didn’t look robust enough for his hard trade.

“I can’t guarantee anything,” I said. “But the cases that do best are the ones that get the most stripping. So work away at it this evening—every half hour if you can manage it. That rubbish in her quarter can’t do any harm if you draw it out as soon as it is formed. And I think you ought to bathe the udder with warm water and massage it well.”

“What’ll I rub it with?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter what you use. The main thing is to move the tissue about so that you can get more of that stinking stuff out. Vaseline would do nicely.”

“Ah’ve got a bowl of goose grease.”

“O.K. use that.” I reflected that there must be a bowl of goose grease on most farms; it was the all-purpose lubricant and liniment for man and beast.

Terry seemed relieved at the opportunity to do something. He fished out an old bucket, tucked the milking stool between his legs and crouched down against the cow. He looked up at me with a strangely defiant expression. “Right,” he said. “I’m startin’ now.”

As it happened, I was called out early the next morning to a milk fever and on the way home I decided to look in at the Watsons’ cottage. It was about eight o’clock and when I entered the little two-stall shed, Terry was in the same position as I had left him on the previous night. He was pulling at the infected teat, eyes closed, cheek resting against the cow’s flank. He started as though roused from sleep when I spoke.

“Hello, you’re having another go, I see.”

The cow looked round, too, at my words and I saw immediately, with a thrill of pleasure that she was immeasurably improved. She had lost her blank stare and was looking at me with the casual interest of the healthy bovine and best of all, her jaws were moving with that slow, regular, lateral grind that every vet loves to see.

“My God, Terry, she looks a lot better. She isn’t like the same cow!”

The young man seemed to have difficulty in keeping his eyes open but he smiled. “Aye, and come and have a look at this end.” He rose slowly from the stool, straightened his back a little bit at a time and leaned his elbow on the cow’s rump.

I bent down by the udder, feeling carefully for the painful swelling of last night, but my hand came up against a smooth, yielding surface and, in disbelief, I kneaded the tissue between my fingers. The animal showed no sign of discomfort. With a feeling of bewilderment I drew on the teat with thumb and forefinger; the quarter was nearly empty but I did manage to squeeze a single jet of pure white milk on to my palm.

“What’s going on here, Terry? You must have switched cows on me. You’re having me on, aren’t you?”

“Nay, guvnor,” the young man said with his slow smile. “It’s same cow all right—she’s better, that’s all.”

“But it’s impossible! What the devil have you done to her?”

“Just what you told me to do. Rub and strip.”

I scratched my head. “But she’s back to normal. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Aye, I know you haven’t.” It was a woman’s voice and I turned and saw young Mrs. Watson standing at the door holding her baby. “You’ve never seen a man that would rub and strip a cow right round the clock, have you?”

“Round the clock?” I said.

She looked at her husband with a mixture of concern and exasperation. “Yes, he’s been there on that stool since you left last night. Never been to bed, never been in for a meal. I’ve been bringing him bits and pieces and cups of tea. Great fool—it’s enough to kill anybody.”

I looked at Terry and my eyes moved from the pallid face over the thin, slightly swaying body to the nearly empty bowl of goose grease at his feet. “Good Lord, man,” I said. “You’ve done the impossible but you must be about all in. Anyway, your cow is as good as new—you don’t need to do another thing to her, so you can go in and have a bit of rest.”

“Nay, I can’t do that.” He shook his head and straightened his shoulders. “I’ve got me work to go to and I’m late as it is.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

I COULDN’T HELP FEELING just a little bit smug as I squeezed the bright red rubber ball out through the incision in the dog’s stomach. We got enough small animal work in Darrowby to make a pleasant break from our normal life around the farms but not enough to make us blasé. No doubt the man with an intensive town practice looks on a gastrotomy as a fairly routine and unexciting event but as I watched the little red ball roll along the table and bounce on the surgery floor a glow of achievement filled me.

The big, lolloping Red Setter pup had been brought in that morning; his mistress said that he had been trembling, miserable and occasionally vomiting for two days—ever since their little girl’s ball had mysteriously disappeared. Diagnosis had not been difficult.

I inverted the lips of the stomach wound and began to close it with a continuous suture. I was feeling pleasantly relaxed unlike Tristan who had been unable to light a Woodbine because of the ether which bubbled in the glass bottle behind him and out through the anaesthetic mask which he held over the dog’s face; he stared moodily down at the patient and the fingers of his free hand drummed on the table.

But it was soon my turn to be tense because the door of the operating room burst open and Siegfried strode in. I don’t know why it was but whenever Siegfried watched me do anything I started to go to pieces; great waves seemed to billow from him—impatience, frustration, criticism, irritation. I could feel the waves buffeting me now although my employer’s face was expressionless; he was standing quietly at the end of the table but as the minutes passed I had the growing impression of a volcano on the bubble. The eruption came when I began to stitch the deep layer of the abdominal muscle. I was pulling a length of catgut from a glass jar when I heard a sharp intake of breath.

“God help us, James!” cried Siegfried. “Stop pulling at that bloody gut! Do you know how much that stuff costs per foot? Well it’s a good job you don’t or you’d faint dead away. And that expensive dusting powder you’ve been chucking about—there must be about half a pound of it inside that dog right now.” He paused and breathed heavily for a few moments. “Another thing, if you want to swab, a little bit of cotton wool is enough—you don’t need a square foot at a time like you’ve been using. Here, give me that needle. Let me show you.”

He hastily scrubbed his hands and took over. First he took a minute pinch of the iodoform powder and sprinkled it daintily into the wound rather like an old lady feeding her goldfish, then he cut off a tiny piece of gut and inserted a continuous suture in the muscle; he had hardly left himself enough to tie the knot at the end and it was touch and go, but he just made it after a few moments of intense concentration.