I knew as I stood there in the primitive, cobbled byre with its wooden partitions and rough stone walls that I was looking not just at a cow but at the foundation of the new herd, at Dick Rudd’s hopes for the future.
It was about a month later that he phoned me. “I want you to come and look at Strawberry for me,” he said. “She’s been doing grand, tipplin’ the milk out, but there’s summat amiss with her this morning.”
The cow didn’t really look ill and, in fact, she was eating when I examined her, but I noticed that she gulped slightly when she swallowed. Her temperature was normal and her lungs clear but when I stood up by her head I could just hear a faint snoring sound.
“It’s her throat, Dick,” I said. “It may be just a bit of inflammation but there’s a chance that she’s starting a little abscess in there.” I spoke lightly but I wasn’t happy. Post-pharyngeal abscesses were, in my limited experience, nasty things. They were situated in an inaccessible place, right away behind the back of the throat and if they got very large could interfere seriously with the breathing. I had been lucky with the few I had seen; they had either been small and regressed or had ruptured spontaneously.
I gave an injection of Prontosil and turned to Dick. “I want you to foment this area behind the angle of the jaw with hot water and rub this salve well in afterwards. You may manage to burst it that way. Do this at least three times a day.”
I kept looking in at her over the next ten days and the picture was one of steady development of the abscess. The cow was still not acutely ill but she was eating a lot less, she was thinner and was going off her milk. Most of the time I felt rather helpless as I knew that only the rupture of the abscess would bring relief and the various injections I was giving her were largely irrelevant. But the infernal thing was taking a long time to burst.
It happened that just then Siegfried went off to an equine conference which was to last a week; for a few days I was at full stretch and hardly had time to think about Dick’s cow until he biked in to see me one morning. He was cheerful as usual but he had a strained look.
“Will you come and see Strawberry? She’s gone right down t’nick over the last three days. I don’t like look of her.”
I dashed straight out and was in the byre at Birch Tree before Dick was half way home. The sight of Strawberry stopped me in mid-stride and I stared, dry-mouthed at what had once been a show cow. The flesh had melted from her incredibly and she was little more than a hide-covered skeleton. Her rasping breathing could be heard all over the byre and she exhaled with a curious out-puffing of the cheeks which I had never seen before. Her terrified eyes were fixed rigidly on the wall in front of her. Occasionally she gave a painful little cough which brought saliva drooling from her mouth.
I must have stood there a long time because I became aware of Dick at my shoulder.
“She’s the worst screw in the place now,” he said grimly.
I winced inwardly: “Hell, Dick, I’m sorry. I’d no idea she’d got to this state. I can’t believe it.”
“Aye well it all happened sudden like. I’ve never seen a cow alter so fast.”
“The abscess must be right at its peak,” I said. “She hasn’t much space to breathe through now.” As I spoke the cow’s limbs began to tremble and for a moment I thought she would fall. I ran out to the car and got a tin of Kaolin poultice. “Come on, let’s get this on to her throat. It just might do the trick.”
When we had finished I looked at Dick. “I think tonight will do it. It’s just got to burst.”
“And if it doesn’t she’ll snuff it tomorrow,” he grunted. I must have looked very woebegone because suddenly his undefeated grin flashed out. “Never mind, lad, you’ve done everything anybody could do.”
But as I walked away I wasn’t so sure. Mrs. Rudd met me at the car. It was her baking day and she pushed a little loaf into my hand. It made me feel worse.
FIFTY-FOUR
THAT NIGHT I SAT alone in the big room at Skeldale House and brooded. Siegfried was still away, I had nobody to turn to and I wished to God I knew what I was going to do with that cow of Dick’s in the morning. By the time I went up to bed I had decided that if nothing further had happened I would have to go in behind the angle of the jaw with a knife.
I knew just where the abscess was but it was a long way in and en route there were such horrific things as the carotid artery and the jugular vein. I tried hard to keep them out of my mind but they haunted my dreams; huge, throbbing, pulsating things with their precious contents threatening to burst at any moment through their fragile walls. I was awake by six o’clock and after an hour of staring miserably at the ceiling I could stand it no longer. I got up and, without washing or shaving, drove out to the farm.
As I crept fearfully into the byre I saw with a sick dismay that Strawberry’s stall was empty. So that was that. She was dead. After all, she had looked like it yesterday. I was turning away when Dick called to me from the doorway.
“I’ve got her in a box on t’other side of the yard. Thought she’d be a bit more comfortable in there.”
I almost ran across the cobbles and as we approached the door the sound of the dreadful breathing came out to us. Strawberry was off her legs now—it had cost her the last of her strength to walk to the box and she lay on her chest, her head extended straight in front of her, nostrils dilated, eyes staring, cheeks puffing in her desperate fight for breath.
But she was alive and the surge of relief I felt seemed to prick me into action, blow away my hesitations.
“Dick,” I said, “I’ve just got to operate on your cow. This thing is never going to burst in time, so it’s now or never. But there’s one thing I want you to know—the only way I can think of doing it is to go in from behind the jaw. I’ve never done this before, I’ve never seen it before and I’ve never heard of anybody doing it. If I nick any of those big blood vessels in there it’ll kill her within a minute.”
“She can’t last much longer like this,” Dick grunted. “There’s nowt to lose—get on with it.”
In most operations in large bovines we have to pull the animal down with ropes and then use general anaesthesia, but there was no need for this with Strawberry. She was too far gone. I just pushed gently at her shoulder and she rolled on to her side and lay still.
I quickly infiltrated the area from beneath the ear to the angle of the jaw with local anaesthetic then laid out my instruments.
“Stretch her head straight out and slightly back, Dick,” I said. Kneeling in the straw I incised the skin, cut carefully through the long thin layer of the brachiocephalic muscle and held the fibres apart with retractors. Somewhere down there was my objective and I tried to picture the anatomy of the region clearly in my mind. Just there the maxillary veins ran together to form the great jugular and, deeper and more dangerous, was the branching, ramifying carotid. If I pushed my knife straight in there, behind the mandibular salivary gland, I’d just about hit the spot. But as I held the razor-sharp blade over the small space I had cleared, my hand began to tremble. I tried to steady it but I was like a man with malaria. The fact had to be faced that I was too scared to cut any further. I put the scalpel down, lifted a pair of long artery forceps and pushed them steadily down through the hole in the muscle. It seemed that I had gone an incredibly long way when, almost unbelievingly, I saw a thin trickle of pus along the gleaming metal. I was into the abscess.
Gingerly, I opened the forceps as wide as possible to enlarge the drainage hole and as I did the trickle became a creamy torrent which gushed over my hand, down the cow’s neck and onto the straw. I stayed quite still till it had stopped, then withdrew the forceps.
Dick looked at me from the other side of the head. “Now what, boss?” he said softly.
“Well, I’ve emptied the thing, Dick,” I said, “and by all the laws she should soon be a lot better. Come on, let’s roll her on to her chest again.”
When we had got the cow settled comfortably with a bale of straw su
pporting her shoulder, I looked almost entreatingly at her. Surely she would show some sign of improvement. She must feel some relief from that massive evacuation. But Strawberry looked just the same. The breathing, if anything, was worse.
I dropped the soiled instruments into a bucket of hot water and antiseptic and began to wash them. “I know what it is. The walls of the abscess have become indurated—thickened and hardened, you know—because it’s been there a long time. We’ll have to wait for them to collapse.”
Next day as I hurried across the yard I felt buoyantly confident. Dick was just coming out of the loose box and I shouted across to him, “Well, how is she this morning?”
He hesitated and my spirits plummeted to zero. I knew what this meant; he was trying to find something good to say.
“Well, I reckon she’s about t’same.”
“But dammit,” I shouted, “she should be much better! Let’s have a look at her.”
The cow wasn’t just the same, she was worse. And on top of all the other symptoms she had a horribly sunken eye—the sign, usually, of approaching death in the bovine.
We both stood looking at the grim wreck of the once beautiful cow, then Dick broke the silence, speaking gently. “Well, what do you think? Is it Mallock for her?”
The sound of the knacker man’s name added the final note of despair. And indeed, Strawberry looked just like any of the other broken down animals that man came to collect.
I shuffled my feet miserably. “I don’t know what to say, Dick. There’s nothing more I can do.” I took another look at the gasping staring head, the mass of bubbling foam around the lips and nostrils. “You don’t want her to suffer any more and neither do I. But don’t get Mallock yet—she’s distressed but not actually in pain, and I want to give her another day. If she’s just the same tomorrow, send her in.” The very words sounded futile—every instinct told me the thing was hopeless. I turned to go, bowed down by a sense of failure heavier than I had ever known. As I went out into the yard, Dick called after me.
“Don’t worry, lad, these things happen. Thank ye for all you’ve done.”
The words were like a whip across my back. If he had cursed me thoroughly I’d have felt a lot better. What had he to thank me for with his cow dying back there, the only good cow he’d ever owned? This disaster would just about floor Dick Rudd and he was telling me not to worry.
When I opened the car door I saw a cabbage on the seat. Mrs. Rudd, too, was still at it. I leaned my elbow on the roof of the car and the words flowed from me. It was as if the sight of the cabbage had tapped the deep well of my frustration and I directed a soliloquy at the unheeding vegetable in which I ranged far over my many inadequacies. I pointed out the injustice of a situation where kindly people like the Rudds, in dire need of skilled veterinary assistance, had called on Mr. Herriot who had responded by falling flat on his face. I drew attention to the fact that the Rudds, instead of hounding me off the place as I deserved, had thanked me sincerely and started to give me cabbages.
I went on for quite a long time and when I had finally finished I felt a little better. But not much, because, as I drove home I could not detect a glimmer of hope. If the walls of that abscess had been going to collapse they would have done so by now. I should have sent her in—she would be dead in the morning anyway.
I was so convinced of this that I didn’t hurry to Birch Tree next day. I took it in with the round and it was almost midday when I drove through the gates. I knew what I would find—the usual grim signs of a vet’s failure; the box door open and the drag marks where Mallock had winched the carcass across the yard on to his lorry. But everything was as usual and as I walked over to the silent box I steeled myself. The knacker man hadn’t arrived yet but there was nothing surer than that my patient was lying dead in there. She couldn’t possibly have hung on till now. My fingers fumbled at the catch as though something in me didn’t want to look inside, but with a final wrench I threw the door wide.
Strawberry was standing there, eating hay from the rack; and not just eating it but jerking it through the bars almost playfully as cows do when they are really enjoying their food. It looked as though she couldn’t get it down fast enough, pulling down great fragrant tufts and dragging them into her mouth with her rasp-like tongue. As I stared at her an organ began to play somewhere in the back of my mind; not just a little organ but a mighty instrument with gleaming pipes climbing high into the shadows of the cathedral roof. I went into the box, closed the door behind me and sat down in the straw in a corner. I had waited a long time for this. I was going to enjoy it.
The cow was almost a walking skeleton with her beautiful dark roan skin stretched tightly over the jutting bones. The once proud udder was a shrivelled purse dangling uselessly above her hocks. As she stood, she trembled from sheer weakness, but there was a light in her eye, a calm intensity in the way she ate which made me certain she would soon fight her way back to her old glory.
There was just the two of us in the box and occasionally Strawberry would turn her head towards me and regard me steadily, her jaws moving rhythmically. It seemed like a friendly look to me—in fact I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had winked at me.
I don’t know just how long I sat in there but I savoured every minute. It took some time for it to sink in that what I was watching was really happening; the swallowing was effortless, there was no salivation, no noise from her breathing. When I finally went out and closed the door behind me the cathedral organ was really blasting with all stops out, the exultant peals echoing back from the vaulted roof.
The cow made an amazing recovery. I saw her three weeks later and her bones were magically clothed with flesh, her skin shone and, most important, the magnificent udder bulged turgid beneath her, a neat little teat proudly erect at each corner.
I was pretty pleased with myself but of course a cold assessment of the case would show only one thing—that I had done hardly anything right from start to finish. At the very beginning I should have been down that cow’s throat with a knife, but at that time I just didn’t know how. In later years I have opened many a score of these abscesses by going in through a mouth gag with a scalpel tied to my fingers. It was a fairly heroic undertaking as the cow or bullock didn’t enjoy it and was inclined to throw itself down with me inside it almost to the shoulder. It was simply asking for a broken arm.
When I talk about this to the present-day young vets they are inclined to look at me blankly because most of these abscesses undoubtedly had a tuberculous origin and since attestation they are rarely seen. But I can imagine it might bring a wry smile to the faces of my contemporaries as their memories are stirred.
The post-pharyngeal operation had the attraction that recovery was spectacular and rapid and I have had my own share of these little triumphs. But none of them gave me as much satisfaction as the one I did the wrong way.
It was a few weeks after the Strawberry episode and I was back in my old position in the Rudds’ kitchen with the family around me. This time I was in no position to drop my usual pearls of wisdom because I was trying to cope with a piece of Mrs. Rudd’s apple tart. Mrs. Rudd, I knew, could make delicious apple tarts but this was a special kind she produced for “ ’lowance” time—for taking out to Dick and the family when they were working in the fields. I had chewed at the two-inch pastry till my mouth had dried out. Somewhere inside there was no doubt a sliver of apple but as yet I had been unable to find it. I didn’t dare try to speak in case I blew out a shower of crumbs and in the silence which followed I wondered if anybody would help me out. It was Mrs. Rudd who spoke up.
“Mr. Herriot,” she said in her quiet matter-of-fact way, “Dick has something to say to you.”
Dick cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his chair. I turned towards him expectantly, my cheeks still distended by the obdurate mass. He looked unusually serious and I felt a twinge of apprehension.
“What I want to say is this,” he said. “It’ll soon be our si
lver wedding anniversary and we’re going to ’ave a bit of a do. We want you to be our guest.”
I almost choked. “Dick, Mrs. Rudd, that’s very kind of you. I’d love that—I’d be honoured to come.”
Dick inclined his head gravely. He still looked portentous as though there was something big to follow. “Good, I think you’ll enjoy it, because it’s goin’ to be a right do. We’ve got a room booked at t’King’s Head at Carsley.”
“Gosh, sounds great!”
“Aye, t’missus and me have worked it all out.” He squared his thin shoulders and lifted his chin proudly.
“We’re having a ’ot dinner and entertainers.”
FIFTY-FIVE
AS TIME PASSED AND I painfully clothed the bare bones of my theoretical knowledge with practical experience I began to realise there was another side to veterinary practice they didn’t mention in the books. It had to do with money. Money has always formed a barrier between the farmer and the vet. I think this is because there is a deeply embedded, maybe subconscious conviction in many farmers’ minds that they know more about their stock than any outsider and it is an admission of defeat to pay somebody else to doctor them.
The wall was bad enough in those early days when they had to pay the medical practitioners for treating their own ailments and when there was no free agricultural advisory service. But it is worse now when there is the Health Service and N.A.A.S. and the veterinary surgeon stands pitilessly exposed as the only man who has to be paid.
Most farmers, of course, swallow the pill and get out their cheque books, but there is a proportion—maybe about ten per cent—who do their best to opt out of the whole business.
We had our own ten per cent in Darrowby and it was a small but constant irritation. As an assistant I was not financially involved and it didn’t seem to bother Siegfried unduly except when the quarterly bills were sent out. Then it really got through to him.