Читать книгу Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Jonah Barrington - Страница 8

Tom White, the whipper-in of Blandsfort – An unlucky leap – Its consequences – Tom given over by the Faculty– Handed to the farrier – Larry Butler’s preparations – New way to stand fast– The actual cautery – Ingredients of a “charge” – Tom cured intirely.

Tom White, a whipper-in at my father’s at Blandsfort, had his back crushed by leaping his horse into a gravel pit, to pull off the scut of a hare. The horse broke his neck, the hare was killed, and the whipper-in, to all appearance, little better; and when we rode up, there lay three carcases “all in a row.” However (as deaths generally confer an advantage upon some survivor), two of the corpses afforded good cheer next day: – we ate the hare, the hounds ate the horse, and the worms would certainly have made a meal of Tom White, had not old Butler, the farrier, taken his cure in hand, after Doctor Ned Stapleton, of Maryborough, the genuine bone-setter of that county, had given him up as broken-backed and past all skill. As has been already seen, our practice of pharmacy, medicine, and surgery in Ireland, fifty years ago, did not correspond with modern usages; and though our old operations might have had a trifle more of torture in them – either from bluntness of knives or the mode of slashing a patient; yet, in the end, I conceive that few more lives are saved by hacking, hewing, and thrusting, scientifically, according to modern practice, than there were by the old trooper-like fashion.

I was in Blandsfort House when Mr. Jemmy Butler, our hereditary farrier, who had equal skill – according to the old school – in the treatment of dogs, cows, and horses, as well as in rat-catching, began and concluded his medico-surgical cure of Tom White: I can therefore recount with tolerable fidelity the successful course adopted toward that courageous sportsman.

Tom’s first state of insensibility soon gave way; and incontrovertible proofs of his existence followed, in sundry deep groans, and now and then a roaring asseveration that his back was broke. He entreated us to send off for his clergy without any delay, or the reverend father would not find him in this world. However, Mr. Butler, who had no great belief in any world either above or below the Queen’s County, declared, “that if the clergy came, he’d leave Tom White to die, as he well knew Tom was a thief; and if any clergy botheration was made about his sowl, it would only tend to irritate and inflame his hurt.” But he undertook to give him a better greasing than all the priests in the barony, if they should be seven years anointing him with the best salvation oil ever invented.

Tom acquiesced; and, in fear of death, acknowledged “he was a great thief, sure enough, but if he recovered, he would take up, and tell all he had done, without a word of a lie, to Father Cahill of Stradbally, who was always a friend to the poor sarvants.”

Mr. Butler now commenced his cure, at the performance of which, every male in the house, high and low, was called on to be present. The farrier first stripped Tom to his shirt, and then placed him flat on the great kitchen table, with his face downward; and having (after being impeded by much roaring and kicking) tied a limb fast to each leg of it – (so as to make a St. Andrew’s cross of him) he drew a strong table-cloth over the lower part of the sufferer’s body; and tying the corners underneath the table, had the pleasure of seeing Tom White as snug and fast as he could wish, to undergo any degree of torture without being able to shift a quarter of an inch.

Mr. Butler then walked round in a sort of triumph, every now and then giving the knots a pull, to tighten them, and saying, “Mighty well, – mighty good! Now stand fast, Tom.”

Tom’s back being thus duly bared, the doctor ran his immense thumb from top to bottom along the spine, with no slight degree of pressure; and whenever the whipper-in roared loudest, Mr. Butler marked the spot he was touching with a lump of chalk. Having, in that way, ascertained the tender parts, he pressed them with all his force, as if he were kneading dough – just, as he said, to settle the joints quite even. No bull in the midst of five or six bull-dogs tearing him piecemeal could, even in his greatest agonies, amuse the baiters better, or divert them with more tremendous roars, than the whipper-in did during the greatest part of this operation.

The operator, having concluded his reconnoitring, proceeded to real action. He drew parallel lines with chalk down Tom’s back – one on each side the back-bone; at particular points he made a cross stroke, and at the tender parts a double one; so that Tom had a complete ladder delineated on his back, as if the doctor intended that something should mount by it from his waistband to his cravat.

The preliminaries being thus gone through, and Mr. Butler furnished with a couple of red-hot irons, such as maimed horses are fired with, he began, in a most deliberate and skilful manner, to fire Tom according to the rules and practice of the ars veterinaria. The poor fellow’s bellowing, while under the actual cautery, all the people said, they verily believed was the loudest ever heard in that country since the massacre of Mullymart.6 This part of the operation, indeed, was by no means superficially performed, as Mr. Butler mended the lines and made them all of a uniform depth and colour, much as the writing-master mends the letters and strokes in a child’s copy-book: and as they were very straight and regular, and too well broiled, to suffer any effusion of red blood, Tom’s back did not look much the worse for the tattooing. In truth, if my readers recollect the excellent mode of making a cut down each side of a saddle of mutton, just to elicit the brown gravy, they will have a good idea of the longitudinal cauteries in question. On three or four of the tender places before mentioned Mr. Butler drew his transverse cross bars, which quite took off the uniform appearance, and gave a sort of garnished look to the whole drawing, which seemed very much to gratify the operator, who again walked round and round the body several times with a red-hot iron in his hand, surveying, and here and there retouching the ragged or uneven parts. This finishing rendered the whipper-in rather hoarse, and his first roars were now changed to softer notes – somewhat as an opera singer occasionally breaks into his falsetto.

“Howld your bother,” said Mr. Butler, to whom Tom’s incessant shrieking had become very disagreeable: “howld your music, I say, or I’ll put a touch7 on your nose as tight as yourself did on Brown Jack, when I was firing the ring-bone out of him: you’re a greater beast yourself nor ever Brown Jack was.”

Mr. Butler having partly silenced the whipper-in through fear of the touch, the second part of the process was undertaken – namely, depositing what is termed by farriers the cold charge, on the back of Tom White. However, on this occasion the regular practice was somewhat varied, and the cold charge was nearly boiling hot when placed upon the raw ladder on the whipper-in’s back. I saw the torture boiled in a large iron ladle, and will mention the ingredients, just to show that they were rather more exciting than our milk-and-water charges of the present day: – viz. Burgundy pitch, black pitch, diaculum, yellow wax, white wax, mustard, black resin, white resin, sal ammoniac, bruised hemlock, camphor, Spanish flies, and oil of origanum, boiled up with spirits of turpentine, onion juice, and a glass of whisky; it was kept simmering till it became of a proper consistence for application, and was then laid on with a painter’s brush, in the same way they calk a pleasure-boat. Four coats of this savoury substance did the farrier successively apply, each one as the former began to cool. But, on the first application, even the dread of the touch could not restrain Tom White’s vociferation. After this had settled itself in the chinks, he seemed to be quite stupid, and tired of roaring, and lay completely passive, or rather insensible, while Mr. Butler finished to his taste; dotting it over with short lamb’s-wool as thick as it would stick, and then another coat of the unction, with an addition of wool; so that, when completed by several layers of charge and lamb’s-wool, Tom’s back might very well have been mistaken for a saddle of Southdown before it was skinned. A thin ash board was now neatly fitted to it down Tom’s spine by the carpenter, and made fast with a few short nails driven into the charge. I believe none of them touched the quick, as the charge appeared above an inch and a half thick, and it was only at the blows of the hammer that the patient seemed to feel extra sensibility. Tom was now untied and helped to rise: his woolly carcase was bandaged all round with long strips of a blanket, which being done, the operation was declared to be completed, in less than three quarters of an hour.

The other servants now began to make merry with Tom White. One asked him, how he liked purgatory? – another, if he’d “stop thieving,” after that judgment on him? – a third, what more could Father Cahill do for him? Doctor Butler said but little: he assumed great gravity, and directed “that the whipper-in should sit up stiff for seven days and nights, by which time the juices would be dried on him; after that he might lay down, if he could.”

This indeed was a very useless permission, as the patient’s tortures were now only in their infancy. So soon as the charge got cold and stiff in the nitches and fancy figures upon his back, he nearly went mad; so that for a few days they were obliged to strap him with girths to the head of his bed to make him “stay easy;” and sometimes to gag him, that his roars might not disturb the company in the dining parlour. Wallace the piper said that Tom’s roarings put him quite out: and an elderly gentleman who was on a visit with us, and who had not been long married to a young wife, said his bride was so shocked and alarmed at the groans and “pullaloes” of Tom White, that she could think of nothing else.

When the poor fellow’s pains had altogether subsided, and the swathing was off, he cut one of the most curious figures ever seen: he looked as if he had a stake driven through his body; and it was not till the end of four months that Mr. Butler began to pour sweet oil down his neck, between his back and the charge, which he continued to do daily for about another month, till the charge gradually detached itself, and broken-backed Tom was declared cured: in truth, I believe he never felt any inconvenience from his fall afterward.

This mode of cauterising the people was then much practised by the old farriers, often with success; and I never recollect any fatal effects happening in consequence.

The farriers’ rowelling also was sometimes had recourse to, to prevent swellings from coming to a head: and I only heard of two fatalities arising herefrom; one, in the case of a half-mounted gentleman at Castle Comber, who died of a locked jaw; and another, in that of a shopkeeper at Borris, in Ossory, who expired from mortification occasioned by a tow and turpentine rowell being used to carry off an inflammation.