A job for Leatherman
First aid, anyone? By the pricking of his thumbs, something wicked this way comes
Until 150 years ago the diseases of seamen were treated with the black draught, a dynamite laxative, and the blue pill, active ingredient mercury, highly toxic. Surgery was worse. Drunkenness was not a vice deeply frowned upon, and surgeons took full advantage of the fact to help them cope with the unpleasant things they did to patients immobilised on four sea chests with the assistance of gags and leather-padded chains.
One of the principal textbooks of the age was Cooper’s Surgical Directory, possibly the grisliest volume in the PBO reference library. This outlined the crucial argument between the advocates of speed in surgery, which reduced the shock of the operation while increasing the chance of schoolboy errors, and precision, which made errors unlikely but which allowed practitioners to delve around for hours in the fully conscious patient, who probably died of agony.
Thoughts like these were running through my head this summer as I was auditing the boat’s first-aid kit and thinking how far things had come. The contents include Savlon spray, butterfly plasters, triangular bandages in mysterious profusion, about a thousand safety pins, a course of antibiotics for emergencies, painkillers, Stugeron: an armoury sterile, in tune with the times, and capable of looking after a patient pending delivery to a lifeboat or A&E department of his or her choice.
I closed the lid and proceeded on deck. The sun was shining on a Kyles of Bute apparently made from sapphire glass. It was a perfect day for mackerel, and we were in need of some supper and a bit of bait for the pots. So with a song on the lips I hauled out the line and lowered weight, feathers and twenty metres of line into the water. No bites. We were going, I concluded, a bit fast. I hauled in. In search of the perfect vertical up-and-downness of the line, I thought with a mind dazed by sun, the weight should be thrown forward, rather in the way of a leadsman casting the lead.
Well, I gave it a swing and away it went. But instead of watching it describe an elegant arc into the briny deep, I became aware of a violent pain, and the weight clattered on to the deck. Looking down at the throwing hand, I perceived a largeish hook with attendant feathers buried over the barb in the thumb. Repressing a desire to faint,
I ran the mind through the contents of the first-aid kit. Triangular bandages were out, a course of antibiotics was about as much use as an anvil, and safety pins were irrelevant. Looking around me, I saw that we were a mile or so off the lifeboat slip. I would go thither, and seek counsel from the RNLI.
The RNLI was having its tea, and suggested that the medical centre might help, but it was Saturday afternoon, and the medical centre was having its tea as well. The kind lady puffing a fag outside the shop mentioned that there were quite a lot of doctors in the house above the quay, but they were probably out, in which case it was an hour’s drive to the nearest A&E, followed by the standard four-hour wait.
So to the house above the quay I repaired. Several doctors answered the door, kindly folk, but retired. With them was a surgeon, also retired. But recently, he said. Very recently. Here I noted a keen surgical gleam in his eye. Hope blossomed. There were, alas, no anaesthetics in the house. There was, however, a Leatherman and a pair of snips. Go ahead, I said, revising the sense of luxurious modernity I had felt during the first-aid kit inspection.
I then gazed out of the window at the harbour, and the surgeon snipped off the hook’s feathers and eye, gripped its shank in the Leatherman’s pliers, and shoved the point through the thumb and out into the air, where he deftly caught it with the pliers and drew it on through, barb and all. It hurt, but it was quick enough for Cooper. Thumb wrapped in kitchen towels and gaffer tape, I went on my way rejoicing.
Two days later there was no trace any of it had happened, and the mackerel were coming aboard in an iridescent torrent. In the first-aid kit there now repose a pair of snips and a Leatherman with needle-nose pliers. Ideally there would be a surgeon too, and a bullet to bite on. Alas, there is no room in the box.
Thumb wrapped in kitchen towels and gaffer tape, I went on my way rejoicing