CHAPTER 6

“And about his shelves,
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds.
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scattered to make up a show.”-Shakespeare.

Doctor Elnathan Todd, for such was the name of the man of physic, was
commonly thought to be, among the settlers, a gentleman of great
mental endowments, and he was assuredly of rare personal proportions.
In height he measured, without his shoes, exactly six feet and four
inches.  His hands, feet, and knees corresponded in every respect with
this formidable stature; but every other part of his frame appeared to
have been intended for a man several sizes smaller, if we except the
length of the limbs.  His shoulders were square, in one sense at
least, being in a right line from one side to the other; but they were
so narrow, that the long dangling arms they supported seemed to issue
out of his back.  His neck possessed, in an eminent degree, the
property of length to which we have alluded, and it was topped by a
small bullet-head that exhibited on one side a bush of bristling brown
hair and on the other a short, twinkling visage, that appeared to
maintain a constant struggle with itself in order to look wise.  He
was the youngest son of a farmer in the western part of Massachusetts,
who, being in some what easy circumstances, had allowed this boy to
shoot up to the height we have mentioned, without the ordinary
interruptions of field labor, wood-chopping, and such other toils as
were imposed on his brothers.  Elnathan was indebted for this
exemption from labor in some measure to his extraordinary growth,
which, leaving him pale, inanimate, and listless, induced his tender
mother to pronounce him “a sickly boy, and one that was not equal to
work, but who might earn a living comfortably enough by taking to
pleading law, or turning minister, or doctoring, or some such like
easy calling.’ Still, there was great uncertainty which of these
vocations the youth was best endowed to fill; but, having no other
employment, the stripling was constantly lounging about the homestead,”
munching green apples and hunting for sorrel; when the same sagacious eye
that had brought to light his latent talents seized upon this circumstance
as a clew to his future path through the turmoils of the world.
“Elnathan was cut out for a doctor, she knew, for he was forever digging
for herbs, and tasting all kinds of things that grow’d about the lots.
Then again he had a natural love for doctor-stuff, for when she had left
the bilious pills out for her man, all nicely covered with maple sugar
just ready to take, Nathan had come in and swallowed them for all the
world as if they were nothing, while Ichabod (her husband) could never get
one down without making such desperate faces that it was awful to look on.”

This discovery decided the matter.  Elnathan, then about fifteen, was,
much like a wild colt, caught and trimmed by clipping his bushy locks;
dressed in a suit of homespun, dyed in the butternut bark; furnished
with a “New Testament” and a “Webster’s Spelling Book,” and sent to
school.  As the boy was by nature quite shrewd enough, and had
previously, at odd times, laid the foundations of reading, writing,
and arithmetic, he was soon conspicuous in the school for his
learning.  The delighted mother had the gratification of hearing, from
the lips of the master, that her son was a “prodigious boy, and far
above all his class.” He also thought that “the youth had a natural
love for doctoring, as he had known him frequently advise the smaller
children against eating to much; and, once or twice, when the ignorant
little things had persevered in opposition to Elnathan’s advice, he
had known her son empty the school-baskets with his own mouth, to
prevent the consequences.”

Soon after this comfortable declaration from his school master, the
lad was removed to the house of the village doctor, a gentleman whose
early career had not been unlike that of our hero where he was to be
seen sometimes watering a horse, at others watering medicines, blue,
yellow, and red: then again he might be noticed lolling under an
apple-tree, with Ruddiman’s Latin Grammar in his hand, and a corner of
Denman’s Midwifery sticking out of a pocket; for his instructor held
it absurd to teach his pupil how to dispatch a patient regularly from
this world, before he knew how to bring him into it.

This kind of life continued for a twelvemonth, when he suddenly
appeared at a meeting in a long coat (and well did it deserve the
name!) of black homespun, with little bootees, bound with an uncolored
calf-skin for the want of red morocco.

Soon after he was seen shaving with a dull razor.  Three or four
months had scarce elapsed before several elderly ladies were observed
hastening toward the house of a poor woman in the village, while
others were running to and fro in great apparent distress.  One or two
boys were mounted, bareback, on horses, and sent off at speed in
various directions.  Several indirect questions were put concerning
the place where the physician was last seen; but all would not do; and
at length Elnathan was seen issuing from his door with a very grave
air, preceded by a little white-headed boy, out of breath, trotting
before him.  The following day the youth appeared in the street, as
the highway was called, and the neighborhood was much edified by the
additional gravity of his air.  The same week he bought a new razor;
and the succeeding Sunday he entered the meeting-house with a red silk
handkerchief in his hand, and with an extremely demure countenance.
In the evening he called upon a young woman of his own class in life,
for there were no others to be found, and, when he was left alone with
the fair, he was called, for the first time in his life, Dr. Todd, by
her prudent mother.  The ice once broken in this manner, Elnathan was
greeted from every mouth with his official appellation.

Another year passed under the superintendence of the same master,
during which the young physician had the credit of “ riding with the
old doctor,” although they were generally observed to travel different
roads.  At the end of that period, Dr. Todd attained his legal
majority.  He then took a jaunt to Boston to purchase medicines, and,
as some intimated, to walk the hospital; we know not how the latter
might have been, but, if true, he soon walked through it, for he
returned within a fortnight, bringing with him a suspicious-looking
box, that smelled powerfully of brimstone.

The next Sunday he was married, and the following morning he entered a
one-horse sleigh with his bride, having before him the box we have
mentioned, with another filled with home-made household linen, a
paper-covered trunk with a red umbrella lashed to it, a pair of quite
new saddle-bags, and a handbox.  The next intelligence that his
friends received of the bride and bridegroom was, that the latter was
“settled in the new countries, and well to do as a doctor in
Templeton, in York State!”

If a Templar would smile at the qualifications of Marmaduke to fill
the judicial seat he occupied, we are certain that a graduate of
Leyden or Edinburgh would be extremely amused with this true narration
of the servitude of Elnathan in the temple of Aesculapius.  But the
same consolation was afforded to both the jurist and the leech, for
Dr. Todd was quite as much on a level with his own peers of the
profession in that country, as was Marmaduke with his brethren on the
bench.

Time and practice did wonders for the physician.  He was naturally
humane, but possessed of no small share of moral courage; or, in other
words, he was chary of the lives of his patients, and never tried
uncertain experiments on such members of society as were considered
useful; but, once or twice, when a luckless vagrant had come under his
care, he was a little addicted to trying the effects of every phial in
his saddle-bags on the strangers constitution.  Happily their number
was small, and in most cases their natures innocent.  By these means
Elnathan had acquired a certain degree of knowledge in fevers and
agues, and could talk with judgment concerning intermittents,
remittents, tertians, quotidians, etc.  In certain cutaneous disorders
very prevalent in new settlements, he was considered to be infallible;
and there was no woman on the Patent but would as soon think of
becoming a mother without a husband as without the assistance of Dr.
Todd.  In short, he was rearing, on this foundation of sand a
superstructure cemented by practice, though composed of somewhat
brittle materials.  He however, occasionally renewed his elementary
studies, and, with the observation of a shrewd mind, was comfort ably
applying his practice to his theory.

In surgery, having the least experience, and it being a business that
spoke directly to the senses, he was most apt to distrust his own
powers; but he had applied oils to several burns, cut round the roots
of sundry defective teeth, and sewed up the wounds of numberless wood
choppers, with considerable éclat, when an unfortunate jobber suffered
a fracture of his leg by the tree that he had been felling.  It was on
this occasion that our hero encountered the greatest trial his nerves
and moral feeling had ever sustained.  In the hour of need, however,
he was not found wanting.  Most of the amputations in the new
settlements, and they were quite frequent, were per formed by some one
practitioner who, possessing originally a reputation, was enabled by
this circumstance to acquire an experience that rendered him deserving
of it; and Elnathan had been present at one or two of these
operations.  But on the present occasion the man of practice was not
to be obtained, and the duty fell, as a matter of course, to the share
of Mr. Todd.  He went to work with a kind of blind desperation,
observing, at the same time, all the externals of decent gravity and
great skill, The sufferer’s name was Milligan, and it was to this
event that Richard alluded, when he spoke of assisting the doctor at
an amputation by holding the leg! The limb was certainly cut off, and
the patient survived the operation.  It was, however, two years before
poor Milligan ceased to complain that they had buried the leg in so
narrow a box that it was straitened for room; he could feel the pain
shooting up from the inhumed fragment into the living members.
Marmaduke suggested that the fault might lie in the arteries and
nerves; but Richard, considering the amputation as part of his own
handiwork, strongly repelled the insinuation, at the same time
declaring that he had often heard of men who could tell when it was
about to rain, by the toes of amputated limbs, After two or three
years, notwithstanding, Milligan's complaints gradually diminished,
the leg was dug up, and a larger box furnished, and from that hour no
one had heard the sufferer utter another complaint on the subject.
This gave the public great confidence in Dr. Todd, whose reputation
was hourly increasing, and, luckily for his patients, his information
also.

Notwithstanding Dr. Todd’s practice, and his success with the leg, he
was not a little appalled on entering the hall of the mansion-house.
It was glaring with the light of day; it looked so imposing, compared
with the hastily built and scantily furnished apartments which he
frequented in his ordinary practice, and contained so many well-
dressed persons and anxious faces, that his usually firm nerves were a
good deal discomposed.  He had heard from the messenger who summoned
him, that it was a gun-shot wound, and had come from his own home,
wading through the snow, with his saddle-bags thrown over his arm,
while separated arteries, penetrated lungs, and injured vitals were
whirling through his brain, as if he were stalking over a field of
battle, instead of Judge Temple’s peaceable in closure.

The first object that met his eye, as he moved into the room, was
Elizabeth in her riding-habit, richly laced with gold cord, her fine
form bending toward him, and her face expressing deep anxiety in every
one of its beautiful features.  The enormous knees of the physician
struck each other with a noise that was audible; for, in the absent
state of his mind, he mistook her for a general officer, perforated
with bullets, hastening from the field of battle to implore
assistance.  The delusion, however, was but momentary, and his eye
glanced rapidly from the daughter to the earnest dignity of the
father’s countenance; thence to the busy strut of Richard, who was
cooling his impatience at the hunter’s indifference to his assistance,
by pacing the hall and cracking his whip; from him to the Frenchman,
who had stood for several minutes unheeded with a chair for the lady;
thence to Major Hartmann, who was very coolly lighting a pipe three
feet long by a candle in one of the chandeliers; thence to Mr. Grant,
who was turning over a manuscript with much earnestness at one of the
lustres; thence to Remarkable, who stood, with her arms demurely
folded before her, surveying, with a look of admiration and envy, the
dress and beauty of the young lady; and from her to Benjamin, who,
with his feet standing wide apart, and his arms akimbo, was balancing
his square little body with the indifference of one who is accustomed
to wounds and bloodshed.  All of these seemed to be unhurt, and the
operator began to breathe more freely; but, before he had time to take
a second look, the Judge, advancing, shook him kindly by the hand, and
spoke.

“Thou art welcome, my good sir, quite welcome, indeed; here is a youth
whom I have unfortunately wounded in shooting a deer this evening, and
who requires some of thy assistance.”

“Shooting at a deer, ‘Duke,” interrupted Richard— “shooting at a deer.
Who do you think can prescribe, unless he knows the truth of the case?
It is always so with some people; they think a doctor can be deceived
with the same impunity as another man.”

“Shooting at a deer, truly,” returned the Judge, smiling, “although it
is by no means certain that I did not aid in destroying the buck; but
the youth is injured by my hand, be that as it may; and it is thy
skill that must cure him, and my pocket shall amply reward thee for
it.”

“Two ver good tings to depend on,” observed Monsieur Le Quoi, bowing
politely, with a sweep of his head to the Judge and to the
practitioner.

“I thank you, monsieur,” returned the Judge; “but we keep the young
man in pain.  Remarkable, thou wilt please to provide linen for lint
and bandages.”

This remark caused a cessation of the compliments, and induced the
physician to turn an inquiring eye in the direction of his patient.
During the dialogue the young hunter had thrown aside his overcoat,
and now stood clad in a plain suit of the common, light-colored
homespun of the country, that was evidently but recently made.  His
hand was on the lapels of his coat, in the attitude of removing the
garment, when he suddenly suspended the movement, and looked toward
the commiserating Elizabeth, who was standing in an unchanged posture,
too much absorbed with her anxious feelings to heed his actions.  A
slight color appeared on the brow of the youth.

“Possibly the sight of blood may alarm the lady; I will retire to
another room while the wound is dressing.”

“By no means.” said Dr. Todd, who, having discovered that his patient
was far from being a man of importance, felt much emboldened to
perform the duty.  “The strong light of these candles is favorable to
the operation, and it is seldom that we hard students enjoy good
eyesight.”

While speaking, Elnathan placed a pair of large iron-rimmed spectacles
on his face, where they dropped, as it were by long practice, to the
extremity of his slim pug nose; and, if they were of no service as
assistants to his eyes, neither were they any impediment to his
vision; for his little gray organs were twinkling above them like two
stars emerging from the envious cover of a cloud.  The action was
unheeded by all but Remarkable, who observed to Benjamin:

“Dr. Todd is a comely man to look on, and despu’t pretty.  How well he
seems in spectacles! I declare, they give a grand look to a body’s
face.  I have quite a great mind to try them myself.”

The speech of the stranger recalled the recollection of Miss Temple,
who started as if from deep abstraction, and, coloring excessively,
she motioned to a young woman who served in the capacity of maid, and
retired with an air of womanly reserve.

The field was now left to the physician and his patient, while the
different personages who remained gathered around the latter, with
faces expressing the various degrees of interest that each one felt in
his condition.  Major Hartmann alone retained his seat, where he
continued to throw out vast quantities of smoke, now rolling his eyes
up to the ceiling, as if musing on the uncertainty of life, and now
bending them on the wounded man, with an expression that bespoke some
consciousness of his situation.

In the mean time Elnathan, to whom the sight of a gun shot wound was a
perfect novelty, commenced his preparations with a solemnity and care
that were worthy of the occasion.  An old shirt was procured by
Benjamin, and placed in the hand of the other, who tore divers
bandages from it, with an exactitude that marked both his own skill
and the importance of the operation.

When this preparatory measure was taken, Dr. Todd selected a piece of
the shirt with great care, and handing to Mr. Jones, without moving a
muscle, said: “Here, Squire Jones, you are well acquainted with these
things; will you please to scrape the lint? It should be fine and
soft, you know, my dear sir; and be cautious that no cotton gets in,
or it may p’izen the wound.  The shirt has been made with cotton
thread, but you can easily pick it out.”

Richard assumed the office, with a nod at his cousin, that said quite
plainly, “You see this fellow can’t get along without me;” and began
to scrape the linen on his knee with great diligence.

A table was now spread with phials, boxes of salve, and divers
surgical instruments.  As the latter appeared in succession, from a
case of red morocco, their owner held up each implement to the strong
light of the chandelier, near to which he stood, and examined it with
the nicest care.  A red silk handkerchief was frequently applied to
the glittering steel, as if to remove from the polished surfaces the
least impediment which might exist to the most delicate operation.
After the rather scantily furnished pocket-case which contained these
instruments was exhausted, the physician turned to his saddle-bags,
and produced various phials, filled with liquids of the most radiant
colors.  These were arranged in due order by the side of the murderous
saws, knives, and scissors, when Elnathan stretched his long body to
its utmost elevation, placing his hand on the small of his back as if
for sup port, and looked about him to discover what effect this
display of professional skill was likely to produce on the spectators.

“Upon my wort, toctor,” observed Major Hartmann, with a roguish roll
of his little black eyes, but with every other feature of his face in
a state of perfect rest, “put you have a very pretty pocket-book of
tools tere, and your toctor-stuff glitters as if it was petter for ter
eyes as for ter pelly.”

Elnathan gave a hem—one that might have been equally taken for that
kind of noise which cowards are said to make in order to awaken their
dormant courage, or for a natural effort to clear the throat; if for
the latter it was successful; for, turning his face to the veteran
German, he said:

“Very true, Major Hartmann, very true, sir; a prudent man will always
strive to make his remedies agreeable to the eyes, though they may not
altogether suit the stomach.  It is no small part of our art, sir,”
and he now spoke with the confidence of a man who understood his
subject, “to reconcile the patient to what is for his own good, though
at the same time it may be unpalatable.”

“Sartain! Dr. Todd is right,” said Remarkable, “and has Scripter for
what he says.  The Bible tells us how things may be sweet to the
mouth, and bitter to the inwards.”

“True, true,” interrupted the Judge, a little impatiently; “but here
is a youth who needs no deception to lure him to his own benefit.  I
see, by his eye, that he fears nothing more than delay.”

The stranger had, without assistance, bared his own shoulder, when the
slight perforation produced by the pas sage of the buckshot was
plainly visible.  The intense cold of the evening had stopped the
bleeding, and Dr. Todd, casting a furtive glance at the wound, thought
it by no means so formidable an affair as he had anticipated.  Thus
encouraged, he approached his patient, and made some indication of an
intention to trace the route that had been taken by the lead.

Remarkable often found occasions, in after days, to recount the
minutiae of that celebrated operation; and when she arrived at this
point she commonly proceeded as follows:” And then the doctor tuck out
of the pocket book a long thing, like a knitting-needle, with a button
fastened to the end on't; and then he pushed it into the wound and
then the young man looked awful; and then I thought I should have
swaned away—I felt in sitch a dispu’t taking; and then the doctor had
run it right through his shoulder, and shoved the bullet out on tother
side; and so Dr. Todd cured the young man—Of a ball that the Judge had
shot into him—for all the world as easy as I could pick out a splinter
with my darning-needle.”

Such were the impressions of Remarkable on the subject; and such
doubtless were the opinions of most of those who felt it necessary to
entertain a species of religious veneration for the skill of Elnathan;
but such was far from the truth.

When the physician attempted to introduce the instrument described by
Remarkable, he was repulsed by the stranger, with a good deal of
decision, and some little contempt, in his manner.

“I believe, sir,” he said, “that a probe is not necessary; the shot
has missed the bone, and has passed directly through the arm to the
opposite side, where it remains but skin deep, and whence, I should
think, it might he easily extracted.”

“The gentleman knows best,” said Dr. Todd, laying down the probe with
the air of a man who had assumed it merely in compliance with forms;
and, turning to Richard, he fingered the lint with the appearance of
great care and foresight.  “Admirably well scraped, Squire Jones: it
is about the best lint I have ever seen.  I want your assistance, my
good sir, to hold the patient’s arm while I make an incision for the
ball.  Now, I rather guess there is not another gentleman present who
could scrape the lint so well as Squire Jones!”

“Such things run in families,” observed Richard, rising with alacrity
to render the desired assistance.  “My father, and my grandfather
before him, were both celebrated for their knowledge of surgery; they
were not, like Marmaduke here, puffed up with an accidental thing,
such as the time when he drew in the hip-joint of the man who was
thrown from his horse; that was the fall before you came into the
settlement, doctor; but they were men who were taught the thing
regularly, spending half their lives in learning those little
niceties; though, for the matter of that, my grandfather was a
college-bred physician, and the best in the colony, too—that is, in
his neighborhood.”

“So it goes with the world, squire,” cried Benjamin; “if so be that a
man wants to walk the quarter-deck with credit, d’ye see, and with
regular built swabs on his shoulders, he mustn’t think to do it by
getting in at the cabin windows.  There are two ways to get into a
top, besides the lubber-holes.  The true way to walk aft is to begin
forrard; tho’f it he only in a humble way, like myself, d’ye see,
which was from being only a hander of topgallant sails, and a stower
of the flying-jib, to keeping the key of the captain’s locker.”

Benjamin speaks quite to the purpose,’ continued Richard, “I dare say
that he has often seen shot extracted in the different ships in which
he has served; suppose we get him to hold the basin; he must be used
to the sight of blood.”

“That he is, squire, that he is,” interrupted the cidevant steward;
“many’s the good shot, round, double-headed, and grape, that I’ve seen
the doctors at work on.  For the matter of that, I was in a boat,
alongside the ship, when they cut out the twelve-pound shot from the
thigh of the captain of the Foodyrong, one of Mounsheer Ler Quaw’s
countrymen!” *

  * It is possible that the reader may start at this declaration of
    Benjamin, but those who have lived in the new settlements of America
    are too much accustomed to hear of these European exploits to doubt
    it.

“A twelve-pound ball from the thigh of a human being:” exclaimed Mr.
Grant, with great simplicity, dropping the sermon he was again
reading, and raising his spectacles to the top of his forehead.

“A twelve-pounder!” echoed Benjamin, staring around him with much
confidence; “a twelve-pounder! ay! a twenty-four-pound shot can easily
be taken from a man’s body, if so be a doctor only knows how, There’s
Squire Jones, now, ask him, sir; he reads all the books; ask him if he
never fell in with a page that keeps the reckoning of such things.”

“Certainly, more important operations than that have been performed,”
observed Richard; “the encyclopaedia mentions much more incredible
circumstances than that, as, I dare say, you know, Dr. Todd.”

“Certainly, there are incredible tales told in the encyclopaedias,”
returned Elnathan, “though I cannot say that I have ever seen, myself,
anything larger than a musket ball extracted.”

During this discourse an incision had been made through the skin of
the young hunter’s shoulder, and the lead was laid bare.  Elnathan
took a pair of glittering forceps, and was in the act of applying them
to the wound, when a sudden motion of the patient caused the shot to
fall out of itself, The long arm and broad hand of the operator were
now of singular service; for the latter expanded itself, and caught
the lead, while at the same time an extremely ambiguous motion was
made by its brother, so as to leave it doubtful to the spectators how
great was its agency in releasing the shot, Richard, however, put the
matter at rest by exclaiming:

“Very neatly done, doctor! I have never seen a shot more neatly
extracted; and I dare say Benjamin will say the same.”

“Why, considering,” returned Benjamin, “I must say that it was ship-
shape and Brister-fashion.  Now all that the doctor has to do, is to
clap a couple of plugs in the holes, and the lad will float in any
gale that blows in these here hills,”

“I thank you, sir, for what you have done,” said the youth, with a
little distance; “but here is a man who will take me under his care,
and spare you all, gentlemen, any further trouble on my account”

The whole group turned their heads in surprise, and beheld, standing
at one of the distant doors of the hall, the person of Indian John.