Dear and Glorious Physician (18 page)

“The cypress trees still stand at the door of the house of Diodorus, and at this door,” said Iris to her son. “A desperate father weeps for his child, a brokenhearted mother is inconsolable. And I — I am but your mother — remember your father.

“But only you suffer! You hear no cry of bereavement but your own. When you were a child you lived as a child. But you are now a man, and should put aside childish things. Did you think the world all one dream of sweetness and happiness? That is the dream of fools, of those who would be children forever, of those who cower before the night, and would have nightingales, like Aedon, singing eternally so that they should never hear the voice of tragedy. Happiness! Those who say it exists, that it should exist, that men are entitled to it because they have merely been born, are like idiot children whose bumbling lips are smeared with honey.

“You have shut your door to that poor slave, your tutor, Cusa, and to the physician, Keptah. You have shut your door in my face. You will revenge yourself on the world because one you love has left you. You will revenge yourself on Diodorus, who loves you and cherishes you as a son. You will revenge yourself on the gods. You will wander away, and all then will be desolate, you believe. But I tell you that Diodorus will be comforted when his child is born, and he will forget you, or think of you with contempt. Your tutor will have another pupil. Only I will remember you, I, your mother, whom you have not seen as a woman without a husband and without a son.”

She trembled in her anger. Beyond the doors and the windows the autumnal rains and winds mourned. Iris had entered her son’s bedroom; the sad twilight showed him at his table, his head in his hands. But for the first time in a long while he was listening. Finally he lifted his head and looked at his mother and saw her. His haggard face became contorted with speechless pain.

“Oh, you who have been so blessed!” cried Iris. “You have been surrounded by love. You are not a slave. You are a free man, born free. What do you know of the world’s terrible sorrow and agony? You are young, you have been nurtured. But you will not lift up your pain and carry it like a man. Like Orpheus, you must weep forever.”

“I have seen suffering and death many times,” said Lucanus in the hoarse voice of one who has been silent too long. “I am not unfamiliar with them.” Now his sunken eyes glittered in the dusk, and he clenched his fists on the table. “Do you know what my thoughts have been these weeks? That God is a torturer, that the world is a circus where men and beasts are done to death savagely, without reason, without consolation.”

Iris rejoiced in herself that her son had finally shown some emotion. But she said, sternly, “It is an evil thing to blaspheme the gods.”

But Lucanus’ words poured from him like some released stream. “Why is a man born? He is born only to writhe in torment, and then to die as ignominiously as he has lived, and as darkly. He cries to God, and there is no answer. He appeals to God. He appeals to an Executioner. His days are short, and never free from trouble or pain. His mouth is extinguished with dust, and he goes down into the grave, and the awful enigma of his being remains. Who has returned from the grave with a message of comfort? What God has ever said, ‘Arise, and I will lighten your burden and lead you to life’? No, there has been no such God, nor will there ever be such a God. He is our Enemy.”

He looked at his fists, then opened them, then turned them over to contemplate his palms and his fingers. His face became harsh and stern with wrath. “I shall learn to defeat Him,” he muttered. “I shall snatch His victims from Him. I shall take away His pain from the helpless. When He stretches forth His hand for a child, I shall strike that hand down. Where He decrees death, I shall decree life. That will be my vengeance upon Him.”

He stood up. He was weak from little nourishment. He swayed and caught the edge of the table. He stood and looked at his beautiful mother, and he saw the tears in her eyes. He cried out and fell on his knees before her and wound his arms about her waist and laid his head against her body. She put her hands on his head and silently blessed him, then bent and kissed his forehead.

“Hippocrates has said that this vile thing is sometimes healed spontaneously,” said Keptah. “Once he remarked it was a visitation from the gods, who certainly in this event are no better than men. He recommends effusions and distillations of certain herbs to relieve the exquisite torment, and advises tampons soaked in wine and potions for the alleviation of women afflicted by the disease, which devours them in their secret places. For men he advises cauterizations and castrations. He thinks of it as only a disease of the private parts, though he is troubled in some of his assertions. Is it a single disease or many? A pupil of his thought it akin to leprosy, when it attacks the skin. Is it the same thing when a mole enlarges and blackens, and kills quickly? Is it the white sickness also? The sickness that destroys the blood, and makes it sticky to the touch, like syrup? Is it that which decays the kidneys, the lungs, the spleen, the bowels? Hippocrates is not sure. But I am sure. It is the same evil, with different manifestations. And the worst of all evils, for it comes like a thief in the night and only at the last does the victim cry out and beg for death when the knife turns and turns in his parts.”

He and Lucanus were in the small hospital set aside for the slaves. Five beds were occupied by groaning and tossing men and women. Three slaves followed them with brazen bowls, oils, and strips of white linen. Another slave carried a tray of small vessels filled with liquid. The physician and Lucanus had paused beside the bed of a man who was gasping in the purest agony. The left side of his face was eaten away as by a monstrous maggot, the flesh raw and mangled, the lip swollen and oozing with blood. The slave looked up at the physician who contemplated him in sorrow. And Lucanus stood and gazed at him with bitter despair.

He murmured to Keptah, “Surely it would be merciful to give him a potion to bring him peace and death.”

Keptah shook his head slowly. “Hippocrates has declared that is forbidden. Who knows at what instant the soul shall recognize God? Shall we kill the sufferer tonight when in the morning the recognition would come? Besides, man cannot give life. Therefore it is not for him to give death. These are reserved only for Him, who is unknowable to our natures, and who moves in mysteries.”

“Kill me!” cried the slave, lashing on his bed. He seized the physician’s arm in a skeletonized hand. “Give me death!” His voice gurgled in a rush of blood.

Keptah turned to Lucanus, who was looking with horror at the sufferer. He touched his arm, and Lucanus moved his head and stared at him with obdurate severity and pleading. “Would you have deprived Rubria of one hour of her life? And I tell you she suffered as much as this, and even more.”

He soaked a pad of linen in a portion of a white liquid which he poured from a vessel. Lucanus clenched his teeth with hatred. What had this poor slave, a gardener, done against the gods to deserve this? He had been a gentle and innocent soul, delighting in the flowers, proud of his borders, loving his lilies, soothing as a father to his roses. There were millions less worthy of peace and life than he. The world was filled with monsters who ate and drank and laughed, and whose children danced in the pleasant gardens of their homes and knew no blight.

Keptah, with great gentleness, took the slave’s darting hand and held it firmly. “Listen to me,” he said, “for you are a good man and will understand. There are those who have this disease but of the spirit, and I tell you they endure more than you. Where your mouth gushes blood, their souls gush violence and venom. Where your flesh is torn, there their hearts are torn. Niger, I swear to you that you are luckier than they.”

The slave began to whimper, and his eyes became full and still. He whispered through his blood, “Yes, Master.”

Wild scorn was like an acid in Lucanus. He watched Keptah lay the soaked linen on the awful and disfigured face. The slave panted. The other slaves, less afflicted, watched from their beds. Then, at last, into the slave’s eyes there came a moist relief, a tremulous surcease. A tear ran from the corner of his eyelid. Keptah took a goblet and put his arm under the slave’s head and lifted it as tenderly as a mother lifts a child, and he put the goblet to the twisted lip, and slowly Niger drank with touching obedience. When Keptah replaced his head on the pillow, Niger had already fallen into a sleep, moaning softly. Keptah contemplated him enigmatically for long moments. His dusky face with its hooded eyes was unreadable.

“It has already invaded the larynx,” he murmured. “He will not live long.” He turned to one of the slaves. “Give him this potion whenever he cannot bear it any longer, but never more than every three hours, according to the water clock.”

“And that is all you can do!” exclaimed Lucanus.

“No. Had he come to me when the first small, hard white sore had appeared on his inner cheek, I could have burned it out with a hot iron. He did not come to me until it was very difficult for him to swallow and the inner parts of his mouth were already bleeding and corroded and sloughing away. Remember that whether it is an illness of the spirit or of the flesh, it is best to seek counsel and help at the very beginning. Later all is lost.”

They moved to the bed of a young female slave who was hardly less tormented than Niger. Her bed was foul with drainings from her vagina. Keptah swung on a slave and exclaimed, “Have I not told you to keep the linen dry and pure? This is poison which is leaving her. I shall report you to the overseer, so prepare yourself for a flogging.”

“Master, I have other duties,” whined the slave.

“There is no greater duty than to heal or alleviate suffering. Truly, medicine is the divine art. Enough. Do your work better, and I shall forget the flogging.”

The slave girl, in spite of her dishevelment and fever, was pretty and appealing. Keptah touched her forehead, feeling its heat. He said to Lucanus, “She attempted an abortion on herself with a filthy and primitive instrument which the savages use. This is the result.”

“I could not have a child born into slavery!” wept the girl.

Keptah said somberly, “The thought was virtuous; the deed was not. You should have clung to the virtue. Have you a bad master? Had you asked him for a husband he would have given you one. This is a virtuous household. But you dallied, out of wantonness and lust. You had no excuse. You were taught to read and write, to spin and to sew, to cook and to render other valuable services. You were not as the slaves in Rome, summoned to the bed of the master at his will. Ah, well. Let us look at you.”

But first he washed his hands with water and then rubbed them with pungent oil. Then he examined the weeping girl, and touched her inflamed and pus-streaming parts. “Will I die, Master?” cried Julia in terror.

Keptah did not reply. He twisted a piece of linen into a thin cone of whiteness. He dipped it into fluid from one of his vessels. The girl blanched. But Keptah firmly separated her legs and thrust the cone into her body. She screamed. The air was filled with an aromatic odor. “Let the tampon remain until night,” Keptah directed his slave assistant. “Then remove it and destroy it. It is contaminated and dangerous. Afterwards wash the parts with flowing clear water, make another tampon, and let the girl herself insert it. By then it will be less painful.”

He patted the girl’s wet hands, gave her something to drink. He said to her, “You will not die, I pray. You will live to sin some more, I am afraid.”

He looked at Lucanus. “Visit her at nightfall. Enforce my orders.”

“Why do you reproach this poor child?” asked Lucanus, resentfully. “Is she greater than her nature, with which your God endowed her? He gave her her normal instincts.”

“Where normal instincts can be dangerous, then one controls them,” said Keptah. “And what is normal? The world? One must have discipline to defeat the urgings of the world, or man is no more than a beast.”

The girl, somewhat relieved, smiled at Lucanus coquettishly. He turned away, sad but revolted.

The windows were open to the cool wintry air, and breezes filled the room. “Air and light are enemies of disease,” said Keptah, against all the advice of other physicians. “Cleanliness is also an enemy. Not to mention self-respect and esteem for the flesh in which the spirit is clothed.”

They stopped at the bed of a young and comely woman with a huge belly. Beside her crouched her equally young and handsome husband, whose face was stained with tears. He rose eagerly and looked at Keptah with bright and urgent eyes. “Ah, Master!” he said. “Surely she is with child, and it is about to be born?”

Keptah sighed. “I have told you, Glaucus. This is no child but a great tumor. She must be relieved of it, or she will die. I have left it in your hands, though I could have operated before. You have waited, and so diminished the chances for her life. It cannot wait any longer. Make your choice now.”

“Master, I am only a slave. You have only to command,” said Glaucus tearfully.

Keptah shook his head. “No man is a slave, no matter how bound and chained, until he admits he is a slave. You are a man. Shall I save your wife now, or will you wait and let her die? She will surely die without the operation; she may live if I perform it.”

He turned to Lucanus. “Palpate the belly,” he said. Lucanus was full of pity for this stoic young woman who did not cry but only smiled bravely. He lifted her shift. The belly was as smooth and veined as marble, and glimmered with stretched tension. He felt it carefully, closing his eyes so as to concentrate through his gentle fingers. It was like feeling stone over her right side, but there was a gurgling of liquid, and a sponginess as he moved his fingers to the umbilicum. “I am certain it is not carcinoma,” he said to Keptah, who nodded in a pleased way. “It is a lipoid and serum tumor,” said the physician. “Very common. It should have been removed many months ago, but this is a couple who longed for a child and believed the tumor was one, after three years of marriage. It is fastened to the right ovary, which will have to be removed also.”

“Then she will have no child!” wept Glaucus. “Or only a girl!”

“Do not be foolish,” reproved Keptah. “Aristotle dismissed the ancient theory that one ovary produces a girl, or a boy, or one teste produces only one sex. Your wife will have her left ovary, and it is the mysterious choice of God whether she will later have a son or a daughter.”

He ground some fresh and acrid leaves in a pestle, added a little wine, and gave the result to Hebra, who took it obediently. Keptah said to one of the slaves, “Stay with her and give her a large goblet of wine, and then another. When she sleeps call me.” Hebra’s eyes were beginning to close, while her husband watched her fearfully. She languidly raised her kind hand and touched his cheek in consolation. “Women, you observe, are less afraid of death and life than are men,” Keptah said to Lucanus as they moved to another bed. “Is it faith? Or, as women are realists, do they accept reality with better spirit?”

Lucanus glanced at him sullenly. Perhaps, he thought, all these remarks which had been directed to him this first morning of his return to the house of Diodorus and his lessons were subtle barbs for his sensibilities, and reproofs. He was angered and ashamed.

The man in the next bed was grossly fat and as white and flaccid as dough. He regarded Keptah in resentful silence. Keptah looked at the little table beside him, on which stood a pitcher of water and a goblet. “You have drunk all this water today, my friend?” The man muttered something in his throat. An odor of apples, or hay, floated in his heavy breath.

“I warned you months ago to limit your love for pastries and breads and honeys,” said Keptah, sternly. “I told you you had the sweet sickness, and that if you did not take care your very muscles and bones would run from you in a river of urine. But I see that you have not confined yourself to lean meats and vegetables, both of which are plentiful in this household, which believes in sufficient food for its slaves. If you do not control your pig’s appetite then you will die very soon in convulsions. Yours is the choice. Take it.”

He turned to Lucanus and gave him a brief talk on the subject of the sickness. “Always, a man is his own disease,” he said. “He who is afflicted with the sweet sickness, where the very urine is saccharine, is often found to be of a self-indulgent temperament which arises from a selfish refusal to cherish others, but only himself. Thus others do not love him; to satisfy his natural human craving for love, he eats of the sweets of the earth rather than of the sweets of the spirit. There are other manifestations of this disease, especially in children, who invariably die of it. It would be interesting to talk with these children, who, even in their tender years, are possibly of a greedy disposition, caring only for self. We can do nothing but prescribe the leanest of meat, the starchless vegetables and fruits, and restrict or omit the sweets and the starches. Little, however, will be accomplished except painful deprivation and prolonging of a restricted life, unless the patient has an awakening of the spirit and thus is enabled to love beyond himself.”