The Healing Season. Ruth Morren Axtell
Any mice for dinner?”
The two continued enjoying each other’s company for a few minutes before Ian straightened and proceeded up the stairs. After washing up, he went to his study.
As he ate the bread and cheese and munched on the apple left out for him, he read the latest medical journal. As soon as he’d finished, he turned eagerly to the package that had been delivered in the mail. It was postmarked France.
He still corresponded with a doctor he’d met at La Charité, one of the largest, most successfully run hospitals on the Continent if not the entire world. He clipped the strings of the oblong box and slit the wrappings with a penknife. He opened the box and drew away the wadded-up tissue paper. Carefully he took out the long cylindrical instrument, which resembled a flute. He turned it over in his hands, studying it curiously. Could it be a musical instrument?
After examining it a few moments, he dug around the box and found a letter. In it, his friend described an exciting new invention by the great physician Laennec. Ian had met him in Paris and observed his care and skill with the wounded French soldiers at Salpetriere Hospital.
The instrument was to aid in “auscultation,” a term created by the physician to describe the process of interpreting the sounds emanating from the body cavities, especially the lungs. Laennec called the new instrument the stethoscope, an “observer of the chest.”
Ian held up the instrument with a new sense of awe. He placed it to his ear as his friend described. How he wished he had a patient with him at that moment. His gaze fell on Plato, who was curled up on his desk, breathing in and out rhythmically.
Ian placed the other end of the long tube, which his friend said the French were calling le baton, at Plato’s chest. The cat stirred and stretched. This gave Ian better access to his chest cavity.
Sure enough, the sounds of heartbeat and breath became magnified, greater than Ian had ever imagined from the current method of putting one’s ear to a patient’s chest, which respect for modesty many times prevented.
His thoughts raced ahead, imagining the possibilities between the relatively new technique of percussion—tapping one’s fingertips against a patient’s chest wall—and now this incredible little baton-shaped object that could increase the interior sounds of a human body.
He reread his colleague’s letter. Nothing had yet been published on the stethoscope. Laennec hadn’t even given any public lectures. But those who worked with him were amazed at the range of diagnostics available with the use of the baton. He described the differences being distinguished in the various diseases of the chest. The lungs of a consumptive had their own distinctive sounds, those of a pneumonic another.
Ian placed the instrument carefully back in its wrappings. Tomorrow he would take it with him on his rounds after surgery.
After he’d cleared off his desk, he headed to the other side of his study and lit the lamps in that area.
Sitting down at his microscope, he began examining the different cultures he’d brought home with him from the dispensary.
Gangrenous matter, ulcerous tissue, a rotted tooth, a slice of a tumor he had cut out and preserved in alcohol. He stared at the tiny orbs moving about under the lens, the different striations, the tiny world brought to visibility under the specially ground lens. He stared fascinated, carefully describing each sample in the notebook at his side.
How did the tissues form abnormalities, the illness attack the healthy organs? These questions challenged the best physicians and surgeons of his day. He compared the healthy tissue to the diseased; he read every journal with the discoveries of his colleagues across the Channel. He thought back to the years he’d spent in France, visiting the large teaching hospitals, studying the effect of spacious wards and good ventilation.
He compared the diseases of the poor in the City with those of the wealthy.
He could only come to one conclusion. The filth and squalor of the living conditions of the poor contributed much to their illnesses and mortality rates.
As the clock struck midnight, Ian finally rose and stretched, realizing how little he knew—how little any of them knew.
When he’d put everything away, burning the putrid matter and washing his slides, he sat back down at his desk and drew forward his Bible.
He opened it to where he’d left off the previous evening and continued reading. The stories of Jesus’ earthly ministry never failed to fascinate him. A pastor, physician, teacher, exhorter, prophet—all in one man. The part of Ian that yearned to preach to the masses the way his father had, rescuing souls from eternal damnation, met the physician in him who wished to cure every bodily illness that caused such human suffering and premature death in the world.
“And the whole multitude sought to touch Him: for there went virtue out of Him, and He healed them all.”
Ian gazed at his own hands. Would that virtue flowed out of them to heal all he ministered to. Where had that healing power gone to since the days Jesus walked the Earth?
Despite the excitement of the new inventions, how paltry they seemed in light of the healing power of God. These instruments served to better illuminate disease, but they did nothing to hasten a remedy.
What had happened to the church in the intervening centuries that had caused the disappearance of the miracles of Jesus’ ministry?
Ian sighed as he closed his Bible. He had surgery tomorrow and must be up early. He needed to get some sleep.
First, though, he bowed his head and clasped his hands atop the black cover of his Bible.
Dear God, I thank You for Your hand on my life. Please continue guiding me in Your perfect will. His prayers turned to the more pressing cases he’d attended to that day and he prayed for each patient.
Another face kept intruding.
Dear Lord, I don’t know the state of Mrs. Neville’s soul. I don’t know why I keep thinking of her. Ian rested his head on his clasped hands. If it’s wrong, take the thought of her from me. Purify my thoughts of her. Let me see her as another soul that needs to know of Your goodness and mercy. Oh, God, make Yourself real to her. Bring her to repentance and salvation in Your dear Son, Jesus’, name.
Though his prayer had ended, thoughts of Mrs. Neville persisted for quite some time before he eventually fell asleep.
Eleanor and her daughter passed the fields at a brisk clip. The top of the carriage was pushed down to receive the afternoon sun. The two had just enjoyed an ice at a confectionary shop at the nearby village.
Eleanor gazed at her ten-year-old daughter in admiration. Sarah looked fetching in the new bonnet and parasol Eleanor had brought her. They matched Eleanor’s exactly.
Sarah had thought that stupendous. Now she twirled the parasol around, laughing in delight each time they passed a farmer in his field. She waved at all they rode by, human and animal alike.
The leaves on the poplars shading the lane were just beginning to fade from green to yellow.
“Oh, Aunt Eleanor, may we stop here for a moment,” she cried, pointing to a lovely willow-lined pond.
“Of course we may.” Eleanor immediately bade the coachman to pull over.
They descended the coach and waded through the tall grasses until reaching the pond. They found a dry bank to sit upon and watch the ducks swimming lazily across the dark water.
“Tell me again about my mama and papa,” Sarah said in the soft tone she always used when speaking of her real parents.
Eleanor looked down at the dark-eyed, dark-haired girl with the dimpled smile. How Eleanor loved that smile. She didn’t know whom Sarah took after, but she was eternally grateful she had nothing of her natural father’s looks—ugly, lecherous knave that he was.
Eleanor put her arm around the girl, who never tired of hearing the tale. “Well, let’s see…your mother, she was the most beautiful