The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [24]
“And besides,” he went on, “children of the backwoods such as ourselves need to stick together, eh?”
Although the Professor enjoyed stressing the bond of our rural upbringings, he was hardly a rustic. The Osler family had eventually settled in a wilderness town in northern Canada, it was true, but the Professor’s father, Featherstone Lake Osler, had been the original choice to sail on the Beagle as ship’s naturalist, a post that went to Charles Darwin only when the elder Osler declined. Though the Professor’s father had then entered the ministry and been posted to Bond Head, Ontario, William Osler had been surrounded by books and learning during his entire childhood.
My boyhood, by contrast, had been dominated by a decidedly different set of stimuli. The fetid smell of our farmhouse still lingered in my nostrils, unwashed bodies mixed with the waft of cheap stew and even cheaper liquor. Yelling, tears, and the soft moans of my mother were never far away. I would continue to send money home so long as I was able, but I had not and would not return to Marietta. With four thousand dollars per year, I could finally make certain that no one in my family could have further cause to accuse me of ingratitude.
“Still,” he continued somberly, “it will be difficult to leave … I have made so many friends.” Then he brightened once more. “But as much as I prize my colleagues here, the Hopkins staff will be truly extraordinary. Welch, as you may know, will be running the show … brilliant pathologist. Lafleur, whom I taught in Canada, will arrive shortly. Halsted is already there.”
“Halsted?” I asked.
The Professor’s face turned dark, an instantaneous eclipse. “And why not Halsted?” he bristled. “He is the finest surgeon in America, probably the world.”
I was stunned by the Professor’s change in demeanor at my query. “Why, yes, Dr. Osler,” I sputtered, “I’m sure you are correct, but I thought that he …”
“Yes, I know what you thought,” the Professor replied. “‘Drug addict.’ You and everyone else.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you didn’t,” he snapped, though his irritation seemed directed no longer at me, but to an audience not present. “Halsted has been unfairly maligned for the better part of a decade. To think that a man of his genius has been reduced to … Well, it’s not important now. Do you know that at this moment, he is perfecting a new surgical suture that will be largely subcutaneous and cause almost no tissue trauma and minimal scarring?”
Before I could respond, the Professor continued, more willing to expound on the prejudices foisted on a colleague than those foisted on him. “Halsted has pioneered one brilliant surgical advance after another. Just months ago, he had aseptic gloves fabricated by the Goodyear Company. Rubberized gloves are a huge step, Carroll. They promise to all but eliminate surgical infection.”
“I had heard that surgeons in New York were beginning to use gloves,” I said, “but I didn’t know Halsted had pioneered them.”
“It was typical,” the Professor fulminated. “One of his nurses was experiencing sensitivity to the carbolic soap with which everyone—or at least almost everyone—now washes before surgery to try to achieve some level of asepsis. To eliminate the need for caustic material to touch the skin, he had the gloves fabricated. They can be rendered truly aseptic. Thousands of lives will be saved each year.”
Dr. Osler took a step forward and actually placed an index finger on my chest. I was stunned. I had never known him to make physical contact in anger.
“Doctor, I would protect William Halsted as I would protect a treasure,” he told me, almost in a growl. “The good he will do over what I hope will be a long life, the lives he will save, the suffering he will prevent … do you really desire that medical science deny itself a man such as this?”
“No,” I replied, still not daring in my astonishment to move. “I suppose not.”
“No supposing about it,” he