mornin”—she never called him “the doctor” or “Doc” or anything but his first name—“on account of he was up all last night hard at work in his laboratory.” Eventually I came right out and asked him what kind of research he was doing, but all he would say was, “Oh, I’ve jist been foolin around with some pathogenic microorganisms, tryin to see if I caint come up with an antibiotic.”
He had very few office calls. Whenever somebody was sick, Doc went to them, at their house. And usually that was only after they had exhausted every other possible means for a cure: home remedies, patent medicines, superstitions, visits from Gram Dinsmore or some other “granny woman.” Doc was just the expedient if nothing else worked.
“I am the last resort,” he declared to me one day, in a kind of self-deprecating way. But there was not only a poignant seriousness to the declaration, there was also a kind of symbolism in it.
And he scarcely made enough income to meet his expenses. He had practically not one cash-paying patient…except me, whenever my time came to settle the bill for my treatment. His patients paid him through a kind of barter. The storekeeper Willis Ingledew gave him free gasoline for his car. Other patients gave him produce from their gardens, or fruit from their orchards, or cordwood from their woodlots, or corn whiskey, or even livestock: pigs and calves and chickens, and a horse. Later, after I became ambulatory, Doc showed me his pantry, crowded with Mason jars of canned fruits and vegetables, blackberry preserves, jams, honey, and molasses, and he showed me the little smokehouse behind his home, where he had hanging a great collection of hams and side meat. “The pay in this line of work aint nothin to mention,” he declared, “but the eatin is sure dandy.”
He was a good doctor, too. My first and most vivid impression of his talent occurred early in my second week there, a morning after my Brand bath when I began feeling worse, after a steady improvement. I wondered if the Brand baths were taxing my system or giving me pneumonia, but they wouldn’t have given me the stomach distress I was feeling.
Doc was customarily easygoing, relaxed, slow moving, and deliberate in everything he did. But that morning he took a good look at me and became suddenly brisk. He popped his thermometer into my mouth and could hardly wait to read it, and when he did, he yelled, “Git the morphine, Rowener!” I began to get dizzy even before he administered the morphine; I was scarcely conscious of his busy movements and what he was doing, and I barely heard him say to Rowena, “He’s a-hemorrhaging.” He worked me over, then said to her, “Fetch me some thromboplastin.”
The last thing I remember of that episode was his telling Rowena to run up to Latha’s and see if she had any ice in her icebox that she could spare, and to fill an ice bag to keep on my stomach. That was, incidentally, my first awareness of Latha’s use of that modern convenience which you would note in your first book about her: that she ordered from Jasper, the county seat and depot for it, an occasional block of ice, manufactured in distant Harrison, the nearest large town. The mail truck brought the ice wrapped in canvas. Latha had the only icebox in Stay More; and a few years afterwards in her general store she would have the only soda-pop cooler in that part of Newton County.
I am not certain that I avoided the delirium that he had predicted might be a sequela of my disease. For a long time I thought it was just a dream, but it could have been a delirious dream. I am reluctant to reveal it, except that it casts some light on what we are going to learn, later on, about Doc Swain’s early career as a physician. Rowena was in the dream too, the player piano was in the dream, in fact there was so much from “life” included in the dream that I did not understand until I “woke” from it that it had all been a dream. It was,
He had very few office calls. Whenever somebody was sick, Doc went to them, at their house. And usually that was only after they had exhausted every other possible means for a cure: home remedies, patent medicines, superstitions, visits from Gram Dinsmore or some other “granny woman.” Doc was just the expedient if nothing else worked.
“I am the last resort,” he declared to me one day, in a kind of self-deprecating way. But there was not only a poignant seriousness to the declaration, there was also a kind of symbolism in it.
And he scarcely made enough income to meet his expenses. He had practically not one cash-paying patient…except me, whenever my time came to settle the bill for my treatment. His patients paid him through a kind of barter. The storekeeper Willis Ingledew gave him free gasoline for his car. Other patients gave him produce from their gardens, or fruit from their orchards, or cordwood from their woodlots, or corn whiskey, or even livestock: pigs and calves and chickens, and a horse. Later, after I became ambulatory, Doc showed me his pantry, crowded with Mason jars of canned fruits and vegetables, blackberry preserves, jams, honey, and molasses, and he showed me the little smokehouse behind his home, where he had hanging a great collection of hams and side meat. “The pay in this line of work aint nothin to mention,” he declared, “but the eatin is sure dandy.”
He was a good doctor, too. My first and most vivid impression of his talent occurred early in my second week there, a morning after my Brand bath when I began feeling worse, after a steady improvement. I wondered if the Brand baths were taxing my system or giving me pneumonia, but they wouldn’t have given me the stomach distress I was feeling.
Doc was customarily easygoing, relaxed, slow moving, and deliberate in everything he did. But that morning he took a good look at me and became suddenly brisk. He popped his thermometer into my mouth and could hardly wait to read it, and when he did, he yelled, “Git the morphine, Rowener!” I began to get dizzy even before he administered the morphine; I was scarcely conscious of his busy movements and what he was doing, and I barely heard him say to Rowena, “He’s a-hemorrhaging.” He worked me over, then said to her, “Fetch me some thromboplastin.”
The last thing I remember of that episode was his telling Rowena to run up to Latha’s and see if she had any ice in her icebox that she could spare, and to fill an ice bag to keep on my stomach. That was, incidentally, my first awareness of Latha’s use of that modern convenience which you would note in your first book about her: that she ordered from Jasper, the county seat and depot for it, an occasional block of ice, manufactured in distant Harrison, the nearest large town. The mail truck brought the ice wrapped in canvas. Latha had the only icebox in Stay More; and a few years afterwards in her general store she would have the only soda-pop cooler in that part of Newton County.
I am not certain that I avoided the delirium that he had predicted might be a sequela of my disease. For a long time I thought it was just a dream, but it could have been a delirious dream. I am reluctant to reveal it, except that it casts some light on what we are going to learn, later on, about Doc Swain’s early career as a physician. Rowena was in the dream too, the player piano was in the dream, in fact there was so much from “life” included in the dream that I did not understand until I “woke” from it that it had all been a dream. It was,
Similar Books
