Out Of His Month Flew The
Forceps, And He Rose Up In The Air With A Blood-Curdling Yell.
The
three of us fell back.
We expected to be massacred. But that
howling savage of sanguinary reputation sank back in the chair. He
held his head in both his hands, and groaned and groaned and
groaned. Nor would he listen to reason. I was a quack. My
painless tooth-extraction was a delusion and a snare and a low
advertising dodge. I was so anxious to get that tooth that I was
almost ready to bribe him. But that went against my professional
pride and I let him depart with the tooth still intact, the only
case on record up to date of failure on my part when once I had got
a grip. Since then I have never let a tooth go by me. Only the
other day I volunteered to beat up three days to windward to pull a
woman missionary's tooth. I expect, before the voyage of the Snark
is finished, to be doing bridge work and putting on gold crowns.
I don't know whether they are yaws or not - a physician in Fiji told
me they were, and a missionary in the Solomons told me they were
not; but at any rate I can vouch for the fact that they are most
uncomfortable. It was my luck to ship in Tahiti a French-sailor,
who, when we got to sea, proved to be afflicted with a vile skin
disease. The Snark was too small and too much of a family party to
permit retaining him on board; but perforce, until we could reach
land and discharge him, it was up to me to doctor him. I read up
the books and proceeded to treat him, taking care afterwards always
to use a thorough antiseptic wash. When we reached Tutuila, far
from getting rid of him, the port doctor declared a quarantine
against him and refused to allow him ashore. But at Apia, Samoa, I
managed to ship him off on a steamer to New Zealand. Here at Apia
my ankles were badly bitten by mosquitoes, and I confess to having
scratched the bites - as I had a thousand times before. By the time
I reached the island of Savaii, a small sore had developed on the
hollow of my instep. I thought it was due to chafe and to acid
fumes from the hot lava over which I tramped. An application of
salve would cure it - so I thought. The salve did heal it over,
whereupon an astonishing inflammation set in, the new skin came off,
and a larger sore was exposed. This was repeated many times. Each
time new skin formed, an inflammation followed, and the
circumference of the sore increased. I was puzzled and frightened.
All my life my skin had been famous for its healing powers, yet here
was something that would not heal. Instead, it was daily eating up
more skin, while it had eaten down clear through the skin and was
eating up the muscle itself.
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