The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker by Cynthia DeFelice Read Free Book Online Page A

horses’ hooves was the only sound. Then Doc turned to Lucas and asked quietly, “Did you come to me because you aim to become a doctor yourself someday?”
    â€œNo,” Lucas answered truthfully. “I—I had nowhere else to go.”
    â€œFair enough,” said Doc. “If I recall correctly, you said you came from north of here. Had a farm there, did you say?”
    Lucas nodded. Then, realizing Doc couldn’t see him in the darkness, he replied, “Yes.”
    â€œBut you couldn’t stay there…” Doc said.
    â€œI couldn’t—I didn’t—” He struggled with the words in his head, trying to figure out how to explain to Doc how the house had felt. Not empty, exactly, but full…full of the absence of everything and everyone he loved.
    â€œCouldn’t stay on alone, manage a farm all by yourself, is that it?” Doc asked.
    â€œYes,” Lucas said. “After—after Mama died, I—couldn’t see my way to stay.”
    â€œWhat did she die from, lad?” Doc asked gently.
    â€œConsumption,” Lucas said. “Same as what Sarah Stukeley has got. Same as what took my pa, and Lizy, and Uncle Asa, and maybe the babies, too, I don’t know for sure.”
    He was about to bring up the cure when Doc began to talk. “Lucas, lad, I went to medical college, did you know that?”
    â€œNo,” said Lucas.
    â€œOh, yes. I went to what many would call one of the finest institutions. We performed surgery. We did dissections. We learned to practice ‘heroic’ medicine. We were taught that the body’s fluids must be kept in balance. Sickness results from an imbalance of those fluids, we were told. Bad blood makes people sick, so we learned to bleed ’em, to get out the bad blood. We learned to bleed and blister and purge and puke our patients.”
    Doc snorted derisively. “And when that didn’t work, we were told to bleed, blister, purge, and puke ’em some more.
    â€œAnd you want to know something, lad? Any one of us who’s got an honest bone in his body will admit that, half the time, we haven’t the foggiest notion what we’re doing. We don’t know why our patients get sick, and we don’t know why they get well, if they do. And when they do, I’ll swear it’s often in spite of us. There are days—and today happens to be one of them—when I think that if all our so-called medical knowledge were to be thrown in the ocean, it would be better for mankind.” He added darkly, “And worse for the fishes.”
    Lucas didn’t know what to say, but his silence didn’t seem to matter to Doc. It was as if the day’s events and the dark night had opened up Doc’s heart and he seemed to want—to need—to talk.
    â€œMany of my fellow physicians look down their noses at the ‘quacks’ who come around selling miracle cures and tonics from their wagons. They scorn the root doctors and granny women, like old Moll Garfield. Call them witches and worse.”
    They were at that moment passing by Moll Garfield’s small cabin. Doc lifted his hat in a salute as they rode by. “But in truth, Lucas, their treatments are often as helpful as any doctor could give. You’ve heard of smallpox, of course,” he said.
    â€œYes,” answered Lucas. “Mama and Pa both lost family to it.”
    â€œA common experience,” said Doc. “And now smallpox is hardly ever heard of, thanks to the discovery of inoculation. But when Dr. Edward Jenner first tried the vaccine back in 1796, he was laughed at by his fellow physicians. Think of it, Lucas! Who could credit the idea that giving someone a very mild dose of a disease would protect him from becoming deathly ill with it!
    â€œYet it’s no different, on the face of it, from Moll Garfield’s remedy for dog bite. She’ll tell you to take a few hairs from the dog