All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot Read Free Book Online Page B

you were a lad.”
    “Dang it, young man, I believe you’re right! I’ll pack it in, now—I’ve made my decision!” Mr. Pickersgill threw up his fine head, looked imperiously around him and crashed his fist on the table as though he had just concluded a merger between two oil companies.
    I stood up. “Fine, fine. I’ll take this prescription with me and make up the udder salve. It’ll be ready for you tonight and I should start using it immediately.”
    It was about a month later that I saw Mr. Pickersgill. He was on a bicycle, pedalling majestically across the market place and he dismounted when he saw me.
    “Now then, Mr. Herriot,” he said, puffing slightly. “I’m glad I’ve met you. I’ve been meaning to come and tell you that we don’t have no flakes in the milk now. Ever since we started with t’salve they began to disappear and milk’s as clear as it can be now.”
    “Oh, great. And how’s your lumbago?”
    “Well I’ll tell you, you’ve really capped it and I’m grateful. Ah’ve never milked since that day and I hardly get a twinge now.” He paused and smiled indulgently. “You gave me some good advice for me back, but we had to go back to awd Professor Malleson to cure them masticks, didn’t we?”
    My next encounter with Mr. Pickersgill was on the telephone.
    “I’m speaking from the cossack,” he said in a subdued shout.
    “From the what?”
    “The cossack, the telephone cossack in t’village.”
    “Yes indeed,” I said, “And what can I do for you?”
    “I want you to come out as soon as possible, to treat a calf for semolina.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I ’ave a calf with semolina.”
    “Semolina?”
    “Aye, that’s right. A feller was on about it on t’wireless the other morning.”
    “Oh! Ah yes, I see.” I too had heard a bit of the farming talk on Salmonella infection in calves. “What makes you think you’ve got this trouble?”
    “Well it’s just like that feller said. Me calf’s bleeding from the rectrum.”
    “From the…? Yes, yes, of course. Well I’d better have a look at him—I won’t be long.”
    The calf was pretty ill when I saw him and he did have rectal bleeding, but it wasn’t like Salmonella.
    “There’s no diarrhoea, you see, Mr. Pickersgill,” I said. “In fact, he seems to be constipated. This is almost pure blood coming away from him. And he hasn’t got a very high temperature.”
    The farmer seemed a little disappointed. “Dang, I thowt it was just same as that feller was talking about. He said you could send samples off to the labrador.”
    “Eh? To the what?”
    “The investigation labrador—you know.”
    “Oh yes, quite, but I don’t think the lab would be of any help in this case.”
    “Aye well, what’s wrong with him, then? Is something the matter with his rectrum?”
    “No, no,” I said. “But there seems to be some obstruction high up his bowel which is causing this haemorrhage.” I looked at the little animal standing motionless with his back up. He was totally preoccupied with some internal discomfort and now and then he strained and grunted softly.
    And of course I should have known straight away—it was so obvious. But I suppose we all have blind spells when we can’t see what is pushed in front of our eyes, and for a few days I played around with that calf in a haze of ignorance, giving it this and that medicine which I’d rather not talk about.
    But I was lucky. He recovered in spite of my treatment. It wasn’t until Mr. Pickersgill showed me the little roll of necrotic tissue which the calf had passed that the thing dawned on me.
    I turned, shame-faced, to the farmer. “This is a bit of dead bowel all telescoped together—an intussusception. It’s usually a fatal condition but fortunately in this case the obstruction has sloughed away and your calf should be all right now.”
    “What was it you called it?”
    “An intussusception.”
    Mr. Pickersgill’s lips moved tentatively and for a