All Creatures Great and Small Read Online Free PDF Page A

Medicine” in ornate script—“A sovereign Remedy for coughs, chills, scours, pneumonia, milk fever, gargett and all forms of indigestion.” At the bottom of the label, in flaring black capitals, was the assurance, “Never Fails to Give Relief.”
    Farnon had something to say about most of the drugs. Each one had its place in his five years’ experience of practice; they all had their fascination, their individual mystique. Many of the bottles were beautifully shaped, with heavy glass stoppers and their Latin names cut deeply into their sides; names familiar to physicians for centuries, gathering fables through the years.
    The two of us stood gazing at the gleaming rows without any idea that it was nearly all useless and that the days of the old medicines were nearly over. Soon they would be hustled into oblivion by the headlong rush of the new discoveries and they would never return.
    “This is where we keep the instruments.” Farnon showed me into another little room. The small animal equipment lay on green baize shelves, very neat and impressively clean. Hypodermic syringes, whelping forceps, tooth scalers, probes, searchers, and, in a place of prominence, an ophthalmoscope.
    Farnon lifted it lovingly from its black box. “My latest purchase,” he murmured, stroking its smooth shaft. “Wonderful thing. Here, have a peep at my retina.”
    I switched on the bulb and gazed with interest at the glistening, coloured tapestry in the depths of his eye. “Very pretty. I could write you a certificate of soundness.”
    He laughed and thumped my shoulder. “Good, I’m glad to hear it. I always fancied I had a touch of cataract in that one.”
    He began to show me the large animal instruments which hung from hooks on the walls. Docking and firing irons, bloodless castrators, emasculators, casting ropes and hobbles, calving ropes and hooks. A new, silvery embryotome hung in the place of honour, but many of the instruments, like the drugs, were museum pieces. Particularly the blood stick and fleam, a relic of medieval times, but still used to bring the rich blood spouting into a bucket.
    “You still can’t beat it for laminitis,” Farnon declared seriously.
    We finished up in the operating room with its bare white walls, high table, oxygen and ether anaesthetic outfit and a small steriliser.
    “Not much small animal work in this district.” Farnon smoothed the table with his palm. “But I’m trying to encourage it. It makes a pleasant change from lying on your belly in a cow house. The thing is, we’ve got to do the job right. The old castor oil and prussic acid doctrine is no good at all. You probably know that a lot of the old hands won’t look at a dog or a cat, but the profession has got to change its ideas.”
    He went over to a cupboard in the corner and opened the door. I could see glass shelves with a few scalpels, artery forceps, suture needles and bottles of catgut in spirit. He took out his handkerchief and flicked at an auroscope before closing the doors carefully.
    “Well, what do you think of it all?” he asked as he went out into the passage.
    “Great,” I replied. “You’ve got just about everything you need here. I’m really impressed.”
    He seemed to swell visibly, the thin cheeks flushed and he hummed softly to himself. Then he burst loudly into song in a shaky baritone, keeping time with our steps as we marched along.
    Back in the sitting-room, I told him about Bert Sharpe. “Something about boring out a cow which was going on three cylinders. He talked about her ewer and felon—I didn’t quite get it.”
    Farnon laughed. “I think I can translate. He wants a Hudson’s operation doing on a blocked teat. Ewer is the udder and felon the local term for mastitis.”
    “Well, thanks. And there was a deaf Irishman, a Mr. Mulligan …”
    “Wait a minute.” Farnon held up a hand. “Let me guess—womitin’?”
    “Aye, womitin’ bad, sorr.”
    “Right, I’ll put up another pint of