Brownsmith's Boy Part 40

"Only a little crack that will grow up."

"Only a little crack that won't grow up, Grant, but which will admit the rain, and the wet will decay the tree; and that bough, at the end of two or three years, instead of being sound and covered with young shoots, will be dying away. A surgeon, when he performs an amputation, cuts right below the splintered part of the bone. Cut three feet lower down, my lad, and then pare all off nice and smooth, just as I showed you over the pruning.

"That's the way," he said, as he watched me. "That's a neat smooth wound in the tree that will dry up easily after every shower, and nature will send out some of her healing gum or sap, and it will turn hard, and the bark, just as I showed you before, will come up in a new ring, and swell and swell till it covers the wood, and by and by you will hardly see where the cut was made."

I finished my task, and was going to shoulder the ladder and get on to the next tree, when the old gentleman said in his quaint dry way:

"You know what the first workman was, Grant?"

"Yes," I said, "a gardener."

"Good!" he said. "And do you know who was the first doctor and surgeon?"

"No," I said.

"A gardener, my boy, just as the men were who first began to improve the way in which men lived, and gave them fruit and corn and vegetables to eat, as well as the wild creatures they killed by hunting."

"Oh, yes!" I said, "I see all that, but I don't see how the first doctor and surgeon could have been a gardener."

"Don't you?" he said, laughing silently. "I do. Who but a gardener would find out the value of the different herbs and juices, and what they would do. You may call him a botanist, my lad, but he was a gardener. He would find out that some vegetables were good for the blood at times, and from that observation grew the whole doctrine of medicine. That's my theory, my boy. Now cut off that pear-tree branch."

I set the ladder right, and proceeded to cut and trim the injury, thinking all the while what a pity it was that the trees should have been so knocked about by the storm.

"Do you know who were the best gardeners in England in the olden times, Grant?" said the old gentleman as he stood below whetting my knife.

"No, sir,--yes, I think I do," I hastened to add--"the monks."

"Exactly. We have them to thank for introducing and improving no end of plants and fruit-trees. They were very great gardeners--famous gardeners and cultivators of herbs and strange flowers, and it was thus that they, many of them, became the doctors or teachers of their district, and I've got an idea in my head that it was on just such a morning as this that some old monk--no, he must have been a young monk, and a very bold and clever one--here, take your knife, it's as sharp as a razor now."

I stooped down and took the knife, and hanging my saw from one of the rounds of the ladder began to cut, and the old gentleman went on:

"It must have been after such a morning as this, boy, that some monk made the first bold start at surgery."

I looked down at him, and he went on:

"You may depend upon it that during the storm some poor fellow had been caught out in the forest by a falling limb of a tree, one of the boughs of which pinned him to the ground and smashed his leg."

"An oak-tree," I said, quite enjoying the fact that he was inventing a story.

"No, boy, an elm. Oak branches when they break are so full of tough fibre that they hang on by the stump. It is your elm that is the treacherous tree, and snaps short off, and comes down like thunder."

"An elm-tree, then," I said, paring away.

"Yes, a huge branch of an elm, and there the poor fellow lay till some one heard his shouts, and came to his help."

"Where he would be lying in horrible agony," I said, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g away at the bough.

"Wrong again, Grant. Nature is kinder than that. With such an injury the poor fellow's limb would be numbed by the terrible shock, and possibly he felt but little pain. I knew an officer whose foot was taken off in a battle in India. A cannon-ball struck him just above the ankle, and he felt a terrible blow, but it did not hurt him afterwards for the time; and all he thought of was that his horse was killed, till he began to struggle away from the fallen beast, when he found that his own leg was gone."

"How horrible!" I said.

"All war is horrible, my boy," he said gravely. "Well, to go on with my story. I believe that they came and hoisted out the poor fellow under the tree, and carried him up to the old priory to have his broken leg cured by one of the monks, who would be out in his garden just the same as we are, Grant, cutting off and paring the broken boughs of his apple and pear trees. Then they laid him in one of the cells, and his leg was bound up and dressed with healing herbs, and the poor fellow was left to get well."

"And did he?" I said.

"Then the gardener monk went out into the garden again and continued to trim off the broken branches, sawing these and cutting those, and thinking all the while about his patient in the cell.

"Then the next day came, and the poor fellow's relatives ran up to see him, and he was in very great agony, and they called upon the monks to help him, and they dressed the terrible injury again, and the poor fellow was very feverish and bad in spite of all that was done. But at last he dropped off into a weary sleep, and the poor people went away thinking what a great thing it was to have so much knowledge of healing, while, as soon as they had gone the monk shook his head.

"Next day came, and the relatives and friends were delighted, for the pain was nearly all gone, and the injured man lay very still.

"'He'll soon get well now,' they said; and they went away full of hope and quite satisfied; but the monk, after he had given the patient some refreshing drink, went out into his garden among his trees, and then after walking about in the sunny walk under the old stone wall, he stopped by the mossy seat by the sun-dial, and stood looking down at the gnomon, whose shadow marked the hours, and sighed deeply as he thought how many times the shadow would point to noon before his poor patient was dead."

"Why, I thought he was getting better," I said.

"Carry your ladder to the next tree, Grant," said the old gentleman, "and you shall work while I prattle."

I obeyed him, and this time I had a great apple-tree bough to operate upon with the thin saw. I began using the saw very gently, and listening, for I seemed to see that monk in his long grey garment, and rope round his waist, looking down at the sun-dial, when Old Brownsmith went on slowly:

"He knew it could not be long first, for the man's leg was crushed and the bone splintered so terribly that it would never heal up, and that the calm sense of comfort was a bad sign, for the limb was mortifying, and unless that mortification was stopped the man must die."

"Poor fellow!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, for the old man told the story with such earnestness that it seemed to be real.

"Yes, poor fellow! That is what the monk said as he thought of all the herbs and decoctions he had made, and that not one of them would stop the terrible change that was going on. He felt how helpless he was, and at last, Grant, he sat down on the mossy old stone bench, and covering his face with his hands, cried like a child."

"But he was a man," I said.

"Yes, my lad; but there are times when men are so prostrated by misery and despair that they cry like women--not often--perhaps only once or twice in a man's life. My monk cried bitterly, and then he jumped up, feeling ashamed of himself, and began walking up and down. Then he went and stood by the great fish stew, where the big carp and tench were growing fatter as they fed by night and basked in the sunshine among the water weeds by day; but no thought came to him as to how he could save the poor fellow lying in the cell."

Old Brownsmith stopped to blow his nose on a brown-and-orange silk handkerchief, and stroke two or three cats, while I sawed away very slowly, waiting for what was to come.

"Then he went round by where one apple-tree, like that, had lost a bough, and whose stump he had carefully trimmed--just as you are going to trim that, Grant."

"I know," I cried, eagerly; "and then--"

"You attend to your apple-tree, sir, and let me tell my story," he said, half gruffly, half in a good-humoured way, and I sawed away with my thin saw till I was quite through, and the stump I had cut off fell with such a bang that the cats all jumped in different directions, and then stared back at the stump with dilated eyes, till, seeing that there was no danger, one big Tom went and rubbed himself against it from end to end, and the others followed suit.

"All at once, as he stood staring at the broken tree, an idea flashed across his brain, Grant."

"Yes," I said, pruning-knife in hand.

"He knew that if he had not cut and trimmed off that branch the limb would have gone on decaying right away, and perhaps have killed the tree."

"Yes, of course," I said, still watching him.

"Isn't your knife sharp enough, my lad?" said Old Brownsmith dryly.

"Yes, sir," I said; and I went on tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. "Well, he thought that if this saved the tree, why should it not save the life of the man?" and he grew so excited that he went in at once and had a look at the patient, and then went in to the prior, who shook his head.