The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [355]
It was after the evening service in the vast cellar beneath the Residency that Dr Dunstaple suddenly chose to speak his mind. Hardly had the Padre finished saying the Nunc Dimittis when the Doctor, who had been kneeling innocently in the front row, sprang to his feet. While skirts were still rustling and prayer-books being closed, he shouted: “Cholera!” Silence fell immediately, a silence only made more absolute by the sound of a distant cannon and by the gurgling of rainwater. This was the word that every member of the garrison most dreaded.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I need not tell you how we are ravaged by this disease in Krishnapur! Many have already departed by way of this terrible illness, no doubt others will follow before our present travail is over. That is the will of God. But it is surely not the will of God that a gentleman who has come here to practise medicine...I cannot dignify him with the name of ‘physician’...should send to their doom many poor souls who might, with the proper treatment, recover!”
“Father!” exclaimed Louise in dismay.
Some of the tattered congregation turned their heads to right and left, searching for Dr McNab; others, though merely ragged skeletons these days, were required by their good breeding to remain facing to the front with expressions of indifference. Dr McNab was quickly located, half sitting and half leaning on a stone ledge at the back. The thoughtful look on his face did not change under Dr Dunstaple’s abuse, but he frowned slightly and stood up a little straighter, evidently waiting to hear what else Dr Dunstaple had to say.
“I don’t pretend that medical science has yet found a method of treating cholera that’s quite satisfactory, I don’t say there isn’t room for improvement, ladies and gentlemen...but what I do say is that it’s the duty of a member of the medical profession to use the best available treatment known and accepted by his fellow physicians! It’s his duty. A licence to practise medicine isn’t a licence to perform whatever hare-brained experiments may come into his head.”
“Dr Dunstaple, please!” protested the Magistrate, who was one of the few cantonment-dwellers who had never experienced any affection for Dr Dunstaple. “I must ask you to withdraw these abusive remarks which are clearly aimed at your colleague. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter medically speaking you’ve no right at all to impugn the motives of a dedicated member of our community.”
“It’s no time for niceties of etiquette when there are lives at stake, Willoughby. I challenge Dr McNab to justify his so-called remedies which fly in the face of all that’s known about the pathology of this disease.”
“Father!” cried Louise again, and burst into tears.
“I’m perfectly willing to discuss the pathology of cholera with Dr Dunstaple,” said Dr McNab in a mild and gloomy manner, “but I doubt if there’s anything to be gained by doing so publicly and in front of those who may tomorrow become our patients.”
“See! He tries to avoid the issue. Sir, there is everything to be gained from exposing a charlatan.”
The Magistrate’s eye moved from one doctor to the other over the passive rows of tattered skeletons and he forgot for a moment that he was as thin and ragged as they were. What chance was there of this little community, riddled with prejudice and of limited intelligence, being able to discriminate between the strength of one argument and the strength of another? They would inevitably support the man who shouted loudest. But what better opportunity could there be of examining the fate of those seeds of reason that might be cast on the stony ground of the communal intelligence?”
“Dr