Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3). Jonah Barrington
make him far worse than before.
The operation at length proceeded, and Lieutenant Palmer himself recounted to me every part of the incident. A strong blister, two inches by three, was placed on the child’s right arm, and being properly covered, remained there without inflicting any torture for above an hour. The left arm was reserved for the scalpel and forceps, and the operator entertained no doubt whatever of complete success.
The mode he pursued was very scientific; he made two parallel slashes as deep as he could in reason, about three inches down the upper part of the arm, and a cross one, to introduce the forceps and strip the loose black skin off, when he could snip it away at the bottom, and leave the white or rather red flesh underneath, to generate a new skin, and show the proper colouring for a godchild of General Washington.
All eyes were now rivetted to the spot. The women cried in an under key to Master George, who roared. “Hush, hush, my dear,” said the Doctor, “you don’t know what’s good for you, my little innocent!” whilst he applied the forceps, to strip off the skin like a surtout. The skin was tight, and would not come away cleverly with the first tug, as the doctor had expected; nor did any thing white appear, though a sufficiency of red blood manifested itself.
The doctor was greatly surprised. “I see,” said he, “it is somewhat deeper than we had conceived. We have not got deep enough.” Another gash on each side; but the second gash had no better success. Doctor Bathron seemed desperate; but conceiving that in so young a subject one short cut – be it ever so deep – could do no harm, his hand shook, and he gave the scalpel its full force, till he found it touch the bone. The experiment was now complete; he opened the wound, and starting back, affected to be struck with horror, threw down his knife, stamped and swore the child was in fact either the devil or a lusus Naturæ, for that he could see the very bone, and the child was actually coal-black to the bone, and the bone black also, and that he would not have taken a thousand guineas to have given a single gash to a thing which was clearly supernatural – actually dyed in grain. He appeared distracted; however, the child’s arm was bound up, a good poultice put over it, the blister hastily removed from the other arm, and the young gentleman, fortunately for Doctor Bathron, recovered from the scarification, and lived with an old dry-nurse for four or five years. He was then killed by a cow of his father’s horning him, and died with the full reputation of having been a devil in reality, which was fully corroborated by a white sister of his, and his mother, (as I heard,) departing about the very same time, if not on the next day. It was said he took their souls away with him, to make his peace with his master for staying so long.
Doctor George Bathron, who was the pleasantest united grocer and surgeon in the county, at length found it the best policy to tell this story himself, and by that means neutralise the ridicule of it. He often told it to me, whilst in company with Mr. Palmer; and by hearing both versions, I obtained full information about the circumstance, which I relate as a very striking example of the mode in which we managed a lusus Naturæ when we caught one in Ireland five and forty years ago.
THE FARRIER AND WHIPPER-IN
Tom White, the whipper-in of Blandsfort – An unlucky leap – Its consequences – Tom given over by the Faculty– Handed to the farrier – Larry Butler’s preparations – New way to stand fast– The actual cautery – Ingredients of a “charge” – Tom cured intirely.
Tom White, a whipper-in at my father’s at Blandsfort, had his back crushed by leaping his horse into a gravel pit, to pull off the scut of a hare. The horse broke his neck, the hare was killed, and the whipper-in, to all appearance, little better; and when we rode up, there lay three carcases “all in a row.” However (as deaths generally confer an advantage upon some survivor), two of the corpses afforded good cheer next day: – we ate the hare, the hounds ate the horse, and the worms would certainly have made a meal of Tom White, had not old Butler, the farrier, taken his cure in hand, after Doctor Ned Stapleton, of Maryborough, the genuine bone-setter of that county, had given him up as broken-backed and past all skill. As has been already seen, our practice of pharmacy, medicine, and surgery in Ireland, fifty years ago, did not correspond with modern usages; and though our old operations might have had a trifle more of torture in them – either from bluntness of knives or the mode of slashing a patient; yet, in the end, I conceive that few more lives are saved by hacking, hewing, and thrusting, scientifically, according to modern practice, than there were by the old trooper-like fashion.
I was in Blandsfort House when Mr. Jemmy Butler, our hereditary farrier, who had equal skill – according to the old school – in the treatment of dogs, cows, and horses, as well as in rat-catching, began and concluded his medico-surgical cure of Tom White: I can therefore recount with tolerable fidelity the successful course adopted toward that courageous sportsman.
Tom’s first state of insensibility soon gave way; and incontrovertible proofs of his existence followed, in sundry deep groans, and now and then a roaring asseveration that his back was broke. He entreated us to send off for his clergy without any delay, or the reverend father would not find him in this world. However, Mr. Butler, who had no great belief in any world either above or below the Queen’s County, declared, “that if the clergy came, he’d leave Tom White to die, as he well knew Tom was a thief; and if any clergy botheration was made about his sowl, it would only tend to irritate and inflame his hurt.” But he undertook to give him a better greasing than all the priests in the barony, if they should be seven years anointing him with the best salvation oil ever invented.
Tom acquiesced; and, in fear of death, acknowledged “he was a great thief, sure enough, but if he recovered, he would take up, and tell all he had done, without a word of a lie, to Father Cahill of Stradbally, who was always a friend to the poor sarvants.”
Mr. Butler now commenced his cure, at the performance of which, every male in the house, high and low, was called on to be present. The farrier first stripped Tom to his shirt, and then placed him flat on the great kitchen table, with his face downward; and having (after being impeded by much roaring and kicking) tied a limb fast to each leg of it – (so as to make a St. Andrew’s cross of him) he drew a strong table-cloth over the lower part of the sufferer’s body; and tying the corners underneath the table, had the pleasure of seeing Tom White as snug and fast as he could wish, to undergo any degree of torture without being able to shift a quarter of an inch.
Mr. Butler then walked round in a sort of triumph, every now and then giving the knots a pull, to tighten them, and saying, “Mighty well, – mighty good! Now stand fast, Tom.”
Tom’s back being thus duly bared, the doctor ran his immense thumb from top to bottom along the spine, with no slight degree of pressure; and whenever the whipper-in roared loudest, Mr. Butler marked the spot he was touching with a lump of chalk. Having, in that way, ascertained the tender parts, he pressed them with all his force, as if he were kneading dough – just, as he said, to settle the joints quite even. No bull in the midst of five or six bull-dogs tearing him piecemeal could, even in his greatest agonies, amuse the baiters better, or divert them with more tremendous roars, than the whipper-in did during the greatest part of this operation.
The operator, having concluded his reconnoitring, proceeded to real action. He drew parallel lines with chalk down Tom’s back – one on each side the back-bone; at particular points he made a cross stroke, and at the tender parts a double one; so that Tom had a complete ladder delineated on his back, as if the doctor intended that something should mount by it from his waistband to his cravat.
The preliminaries being thus gone through, and Mr. Butler furnished with a couple of red-hot irons, such as maimed horses are fired with, he began, in a most deliberate and skilful manner, to fire Tom according to the rules and practice of the ars veterinaria. The poor fellow’s bellowing, while under the actual cautery, all the people said, they verily believed was the loudest ever heard in that country since the massacre of Mullymart.6 This part of the operation, indeed, was by no means superficially performed, as Mr. Butler mended the lines and made them all of a uniform depth and colour, much as the writing-master mends the letters and strokes in a child’s
A massacre of the Irish at a place called Mullymart, in the county of Kildare, which is spoken of by Casaubon in his Britannia as a thing prophesied: the prophesy did actually take effect; and it is, altogether, one of the most remarkable traditionary tales of that country.