That girl nearly causes a pile-up when she crosses the road on market day
ALL Creatures Great And Small was the adored TV drama about a young vet’s adventures in the Yorkshire Dales. And, in tribute to star Robert Hardy, who played Siegfried Farnon and has died at 91, all this week we’ve been revisiting James Herriot’s magical
UNFORTUNATELY, it was during one of Siegfried’s efficiency drives that his good friend Colonel Merrick’s cow swallowed a piece of wire. Everybody suffered when my boss had these spells. They usually came on after he had been reading about some amazing new high-tech procedure. He would rampage around, calling on the cowering household to stir themselves and be better people. He would be obsessed, while it lasted, with a craving for perfection.
‘We must put on a better show at these operations on the farms,’ he announced one morning. ‘It just isn’t good enough to fish out a few old instruments from a bag and start hacking at the animal. We must have cleanliness, asepsis if possible, and an orderly technique.’
So he was jubilant when he diagnosed traumatic reticulitis (foreign body in the second stomach) in the colonel’s cow. ‘We’ll really show old Hubert something. We’ll give him a picture of veterinary surgery he’ll never forget.’
Tristan and I were pressed into service as assistants, and our arrival at the farm was really impressive. Siegfried led the procession, looking unusually smart in a brand new tweed jacket of which he was very proud. He was a debonair figure as he shook hands with his friend.
The colonel was jovial. ‘Hear you’re going to operate on my cow. Take out a wire, eh? Like to watch you do it, if it’s all right with you.’
‘By all means, Hubert, please do. You’ll find it very interesting.’
In the cowshed, Tristan and I arranged tables alongside the patient, and on these we placed new metal trays with rows of shining, sterilised instruments. Scalpels, probes, artery forceps, hypodermic syringes, suture needles, gut and silk in glass phials, rolls of cotton wool and bottles of spirit and other antiseptics.
Siegfried fussed around, happy as a sandboy. He had clever hands and, as a surgeon, he was worth watching. I could read his mind. This, he was thinking, was going to be good.
When all was to his liking, he took off his jacket and donned a brilliantly white overall. He handed the jacket to Tristan and almost instantly gave a roar of anger.
‘Hey, don’t just throw it down on that meal bin! Here, give it to me. I’ll find a safe place for it.’ He dusted the new garment down tenderly and hung it on a nail.
Meanwhile, I had shaved and disinfected the operation site on the flank and everything was ready for the local anaesthetic. Siegfried took the syringe and quickly infiltrated the area. ‘This is where we go inside, Hubert. I hope you aren’t squeamish.’
The colonel beamed. ‘Oh, I’ve seen blood before. You needn’t worry — I won’t faint.’
With a bold sweep of the scalpel, Siegfried incised the skin. The smooth wall of the rumen (the large first stomach) lay exposed. My boss reached for a fresh scalpel and looked for the best place to cut into the rumen.
He inserted the knife and cut sharply downwards.
I was glad I had moved away because no sooner had he done so than a high-pressure jet of semiliquid stomach contents — a greenish-brown, evil-smelling cascade — erupted from the depths of the cow as if from an invisible pump.
The first direct hit was on Siegfried’s face. He couldn’t release his hold of the rumen for fear of contamination. So he hung on to each side of the opening while the vile torrent poured on to his hair, down his neck and all over his lovely white overall.
Now and then, the steady stream would be varied by a sudden explosion which sent the fermenting broth spouting viciously over everything in the immediate vicinity. In no time the trays with their gleaming instruments were thoroughly covered.
The tidy rows of swabs, the snowy tufts of cotton wool disappeared, but it was the unkindest cut of all when a particularly powerful jet sent a liberal spray over the new jacket, hanging on the wall.
Siegfried’s face was too obscured for me to detect any change of expression, but the colonel’s eyebrows were raised to the maximum and his mouth hung open as he gazed in disbelief at the chaotic scene. Siegfried, still hanging grimly on, was at the centre of it all, paddling about in a reeking swamp which came halfway up his Wellington boots. His hair was stiffened and frizzy and his face completely brown.
Eventually, the flood slowed to a trickle and stopped. I was able to hold the lips of the wound while Siegfried inserted his arm and felt his way inside. A satisfied grunt told me he had located the piercing wire and within seconds he had removed it.
Tristan had been frantically salvaging and washing suture materials, and soon the incision in the rumen was stitched. Silently and neatly, he secured the skin and muscles and swabbed around.
Everything looked fine. The cow seemed unperturbed; under the anaesthetic she had known nothing of the titanic struggle with her insides. In fact, freed from the discomfort of the wire, she appeared to be feeling better.
It took quite a time to tidy up the mess and the most difficult job was to make Siegfried presentable. We did our best by swilling him down with buckets of water while, all the time, he scraped sadly at his
but we must be off.’ He went out of the shed. ‘I think you’ll find the cow will be eating in a day or two. I’ll be back in a fortnight to take out the stitches.’
In the confined space of the car, Tristan and I were unable to get as far away from him as we would have liked. Even with our heads stuck out of the windows, it was still pretty bad.
Siegfried drove for a mile or two in silence, then he turned to me and his streaked features broke into a grin.
There was something indomitable about him. ‘You never know what’s round the corner in this game, my boys, but just think of this — that operation was a success.’