Let Sleeping Vets Lie

by James Herriot

  tied-on skin in a non-committal way, then after a few seconds she gave a

  few quick licks and the merest beginning of the familiar deep chuckle.

  I began to gather up my gear. "I hope he makes it," I said. "Those two

  need each other." As I left the pen Herbert, in his new jacket, was

  still working away.

  For the next week I hardly seemed to have my coat on. The flood of sheep

  work was at its peak and I spent hours of every day with my arms in and

  out of buckets of water in all corners of the district - in the pens, in

  dark nooks in farm buildings or very often in the open fields, because

  the farmers of those days

  didn't find anything disturbing in the sight of a vet kneeling in his

  shirt sleeves for an hour in the rain.

  I had one more visit to Rob Benson's place. To a ewe with a prolapsed

  uterus after lambing - a job whose chief delight was comparing it with

  the sweat of replacing a uterus in a cow.

  It was so beautifully easy. Rob rolled the animal on to her side then

  held her more or less upside down by tying a length of rope to her hind

  legs and passing it round his neck. In that position she couldn't strain

  and I disinfected the organ and pushed it back with the minimum of

  effort, gently inserting an arm at the finish to work it properly into

  place.

  Afterwards the ewe trotted away unperturbed with her family to join the

  rapidly growing flock whose din was all around us.

  "Look!" Rob cried. "There's that awd ewe with Herbert. Over there on

  ttright!in the middle of that bunch." They all looked the same to me but

  to Rob, like all shepherds, they were as different as people and he

  picked out these two effortlessly.

  The were near the top of the field and as I wanted to have a close look

  at them we manoeuvred them into a corner. The ewe, fiercely possessive,

  stamped her foot at us as we approached, and Herbert, who had discarded

  his woolly jacket, held close to the flank of his new mother. He was, I

  noticed, faintly obese in appearance.

  "You couldn't call him a runt now, Rob," I said.

  The farmer laughed. "Nay, t'awd lass has a bag like a cow and Herbert's

  gettin" the lot. By yaw, he's in clover is that little youth and I

  reckon he saved the ewe's lifeshe'd have pegged out all right, but she

  never looked back once he came along."

  I looked away, over the noisy pens, over the hundreds of sheep moving

  across the fields. I turned to the farmer. "I'm afraid you've seen a lot

  of me lately, Rob. I hope this is the last visit."

  "Aye well it could be. We're getting well through now ... but it's a

  hell of a time, lambin" isn't it?"

  "It is that. Well I must be offi'll leave you to it." I turned and made

  my way down the hillside, my arms raw and chafing in my sleeves, my

  cheeks whipped by the eternal wind gusting over the grass. At the gate I

  stopped and gazed back at the wide landscape, ribbed and streaked by the

  last of the winter's snow, and at the dark grey banks of cloud riding

  across on the wind followed by lakes of brightest blue; and in seconds

  the fields and walls and woods burst into vivid life and I had to close

  my eyes against the sun's glare. As I stood there the distant uproar

  came faintly down to me, the tumultuous harmony from deepest bass to

  highest treble; demanding, anxious, angry, loving.

  The sound of the sheep, the sound of spring.

  Chapter Three.

  "Them masticks," said Mr. Pickersgill judicially, 'is a proper bugger."

  I nodded my head in agreement that his mastitis problem was indeed

  giving cause for concern; and reflected at the same time that while most

  farmers would have been content with the local word 'felon" it was

  typical that Mr. Pickersgill should make a determined if somewhat

  inaccurate attempt at the scientific term.

  Sometimes he got very wide of the mark as one time long after this when

  Artificial Insemination or AI was gaining a foothold in the Dales he

  made my day by telling me he had a cow in calf to the ICI.

  However he usually did better than this - most of his efforts were near

  misses or bore obvious evidence of their derivation - but I could never

  really fathom where he got the masticks. I did know that once he

  fastened on to an expression it never changed; mastitis had always been

  'them masticks" with him and it always would be. And I knew, too, that

  nothing would ever stop him doggedly trying to be right.

  Because Mr. Pickersgill had what he considered to be a scholastic

  background. He was a man of about sixty and when in his teens he had

  attended a two week course of instruction for agricultural workers at

  Leeds University. This brief glimpse of the academic life had left an

  indelible impression on his mind, and it was as if the intimation of

  something deep and true behind the facts of his everyday work had

  kindled a flame in him which had illumined his subsequent life.

  No capped and gowned don ever looked back to his years among the spires

  of Oxford with more nostalgia than did Mr. Pickersgill to his fortnight

  at Leeds and his conversation was usually laced with references to a

  godlike Professor Malleson who had apparently been in charge of the

  course.

  "Ah don't know what to make of it," he continued. "In ma college days I

  was allus told that you got a big swollen bag and dirty milk with them

  masticks but this must be another kind. Just little bits of flakes in

  the milk off and on neither nowt nor something, but I'm right fed up

  with it, I'll tell you."

  I took a sip from the cup of tea which Mrs. Pickersgill had placed in

  front of me on the kitchen table. "Yes, it's very worrying the way it

  keeps going on and on. I'm sure there's a definite factor behind it all

  - I wish I could put my finger on it."

  But in fact I had a good idea what was behind it. I had happened in at

  the little byre late one afternoon when Mr. Pickersgill and his daughter

  Olive were milking their ten cows. I had watched the two at work as they

  crouched under the row of roan and red backs ,and one thing was

  immediately obvious; while Olive drew the milk by almost imperceptible

  movements of her fingers and with a motionless wrist, her father hauled

  away at the teats as though he was trying to ring in the new year.

  This insight coupled with the fact that it was always the cows Mr.

  Pickersgill milked that gave trouble was enough to convince me that the

  chronic mastitis was of traumatic origin.

  But how to tell the farmer that he wasn't doing his job right and that

  the only solution was to learn a more gentle technique or let Olive take

  over all the milking?

  It wouldn't be easy because Mr. Pickersgill was an impressive man. I

  don't suppose he had a spare penny in the world but even as he sat there

  in the kitchen in his tattered, collarless flannel shirt and braces he

  looked, as always, like an industrial tycoon. You could imagine that

  massive head with its fleshy cheeks, noble brow and serene eyes looking

  out from the financial pages of The Times. Put him in a bowler and

  striped trousers and you
'd have the perfect chairman of the board.

  I was very chary of affronting such natural dignity and anyway, Mr.

  Pickersgill was fundamentally a fine stocksman. His few cows, like all

  the animals of that fast-dying breed of small farmer, were fat and sleek

  and clean. You had to look after your beasts when they were your only

  source of income and somehow Mr. Pickersgill had brought up a family by

  milk production eked out by selling a few pigs and the eggs from his

  wife's fifty hens.

  I could never quite work out how they did it but they lived, and they

  lived graciously. All the family but Olive had married and left home but

  there was still a rich decorum and harmony in that house. The present

  scene was typical The farmer expounding gravely, Mrs. Pickersgill

  bustling about in the back ground, listening to him with quiet pride.

  Olive too, was happy. Though in her late thirties, she had no fears of

  spinsterhood because she had been assiduously courted for fifteen years

  by Charlie Hudson from the Darrowby fish shop and though Charlie was not

  a tempestuous suitor there was nothing flighty about him and he was

  confidently expected to pop the question over the next ten years or so.

  Mr. Pickersgill offered me another buttered scone and when I declined he

  cleared his throat a few times as though trying to find words. "Mr.

  Herriot," he said at last, "I don't like to tell nobody his job, but

  we've tried all your remedies for them masticks and we've still got

  trouble. Now when I studied under Professor Malleson I noted down a lot

  of good cures and I'd like to try this 'un. Have a look at it."

  He put his hand in his hip pocket and produced a yellowed slip of

  paper:~ almost falling apart at the folds. "It's an udder salve. Maybe

  if we gave the bags a good rub with it it'd do "'trick."

  I read the prescription in the fine copperplate writing. Camphor,

  eucalyptus, ~ zinc oxide - a long list of the old familiar names. I

  couldn't help feeling a hint.` of affection for them but it was tempered

  by a growing disillusion. I was about to say that I didn't think rubbing

  anything on the udder would make the slightest ~ difference when the

  farmer groaned loudly. ~:

  The action of reaching into his hip pocket had brought on a twinge of

  his lumbago and he sat very upright, grimacing with pain.

  "This bloody old back of mine! By yaw, it does give me some stick, and

  doctor can't do nowt about it. I've had enough pills to make me rattle

  but ah get no relief."

  I'm not brilliant but I do get the odd blinding flash and I had one now.

  "Mr. Pickersgill," I said solemnly, 'you've suffered from that lumbago

  ever since I've known you and I've just thought of something. I believe

  I know how to cure it."

  The farmer's eyes widened and he stared at me with a childlike trust in

  which there was no trace of scepticism. This could be expected, because

  just as people place more reliance on the words of knacker men and meal

  travellers than their vets" when their animals are concerned it was

  natural that they would believe the vet rather than their doctor with

  their own ailments.

  "You know how to put me right?" he said faintly.

  "I think so, and it has nothing to do with medicine. You'll have to

  stop: milking."

  "Stop milking! What the 'elf ... ?"

  "Of course. Don't you see, it's sitting crouched on that little stool

  night and morning every day of the week that's doing it. You're a big

  chap and you've got to bend to get down there - I'm sure it's bad for

  you."

  Mr. Pickersgill gazed into space as though he bad seen a vision. "You

  really think ... '

  "Yes, I do. You ought to give it a try, anyway. Olive can do the

  milking. She's always saying she ought to do it all."

  "That's right, Dad," Olive chimed in. "I like milking, you know I do,

  and it's time you gave it up - you've done it ever since you were a

  lad."

  "Dang it, young man, I believe you're right! I'll pack it in, now - I've

  made my decision!" Mr. Pickersgill threw up his fine head, looked

  imperiously around:

  him and crashed his fist on the table as though he had just concluded a

  merge. between two oil companies I stood up. "Fine, fine I'll take this

  prescription with me and make up the udder salve. It'll be ready for you

  tonight and I should start using it immediately."

  It was about a month later that I saw Mr. Pickersgill. He was on a

  bicycle pedalling majestically across the market place and he dismounted

  when he saw me.

  "Now then, Mr. Herriot," he said, puffing slightly. "I'm glad I've met

  you. I've been meaning to come and tell you that we don't have no flakes

  in the milk now.

  Ever since we started with t'salve they began to disappear and milk's as

  clear as it can be now."

  "Oh, great. And how's your lumbago?"

  "Well I'll tell you, you've really capped it and I'm grateful. Ah've

  never milked since that day and I hardly get a twinge now." He paused

  and smiled indulgently. you gave me some good advice for me back, but we

  had to go back to awd Professor Malleson to cure them masticks, didn't

  we?"

  My next encounter with Mr. Pickersgill was on the telephone.

  "I'm speaking from the cossack," he said in a subdued shout.

  "From the what?"

  "The cossack, the telephone cossack in "'village."

  "Yes, indeed," I said, 'and what can I do for you?"

  "I want you to come out as soon as possible, to treat a calf for

  semolina."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I'ave a calf with semolina."

  "Semolina?"

  "Aye, that's right. A feller was on about it on "'wireless the other

  morning."

  "Oh! Ah yes, I see." I too had heard a bit of the farming talk on

  Salmonella infection in calves. "What makes you think you've got this

  trouble?"

  "Well it's just like that feller said. Me calf's bleeding from the

  rectrum."

  "From the ... ? Yes, yes, of course. Well I'd better have a look at him

  - I won't be long."

  The calf was pretty ill when I saw him and he did have rectal bleeding,

  but it wasn't like Salmonella.

  "There's no diarrhoea, you see, Mr. Pickersgill," I said. "In fact, he

  seems to be constipated. This is almost pure blood coming away from him.

  And he hasn't got a very high temperature."

  The farmer seemed a little disappointed. "Dang, I thowt it was just same

  as that feller was talking about. He said you could send samples off to

  the Labrador."

  "Eh? To the what?"

  "The investigation labrador - you know."

  "Oh yes, quite, but I don't think the lab would be of any help in this

  case."

  "Aye well, what's wrong with him, then? Is something the matter with his

  rectrum ?"

  "No, no," I said. "But there seems to be some obstruction high up his

  bowel which is causing this haemorrhage." I looked at the little animal

  standing motionless with his back up. He was totally preoccupied with

  some internal discomfort and now and then he strained and grunted


  softly.

  And of course I should have known straight away - it was so obvious. But

  I Suppose we all have blind spells when we can't see what is pushed in

  front of our eyes, and for a few days I played around with that calf in

  a haze of ~ignorance, giving it this and that medicine which I'd rather

  not talk about.

  But I was lucky. He recovered in spite of my treatment. It wasn't until

  Mr. Pickersgill showed me the little roll of necrotic tissue which the

  calf had passed that the thing dawned on me.

  I turned, shame-faced, to the farmer. "This is a bit of dead bowel all

  telescoped together - an intussusception. It's usually a fatal condition

  but fortunately in this case the obstruction has sloughed away and your

  calf should be all right now."

  "What was it you called it?"

  "An intussusception."

  Mr. Pickersgill's lips moved tentatively and for a moment I thought he

  was going to have a shot at it. But he apparently decided against it.

  "Oh," he said "That's what it was, was it?"

  "Yes, and it's difficult to say just what caused it."

  The farmer sniffed. "I'll bet I know what was behind it. I always said

  this one 'ud be a weakly calf. When he was born he bled a lot from his

  biblical cord."

  Mr. Pickersgill hadn't finished with me yet. It was only a week later

  that I heard him on the phone again.