Speaking of Operations | Page 4

conversation
seems to drag. Just speak up in an offhand kind of way and say that you
never care much about breakfast--a slice of toast and a cup of weak tea
start you off properly for doing a hard day's work. You will be
surprised to note how things liven up and how eagerly all present join
in. The lady on your left feels that you should know she always takes
two lumps of sugar and nearly half cream, because she simply cannot
abide hot milk, no matter what the doctors say. The gentleman on your
right will be moved to confess he likes his eggs boiled for exactly three
minutes, no more and no less. Buckwheat cakes and sausage find a
champion and oatmeal rarely lacks a warm defender.
But after all, when all is said and done, the king of all topics is
operations. Sooner or later, wherever two or more are gathered together
it is reasonably certain that somebody will bring up an operation.
Until I passed through the experience of being operated on myself, I
never really realized what a precious conversational boon the subject is,
and how great a part it plays in our intercourse with our fellow beings

on this planet. To the teller it is enormously interesting, for he is not
only the hero of the tale but the rest of the cast and the stage setting as
well--the whole show, as they say; and if the listener has had a similar
experience--and who is there among us in these days that has not taken
a nap 'neath the shade of the old ether cone?--it acquires a doubled
value.
"Speaking of operations--" you say, just like that, even though nobody
present has spoken of them; and then you are off, with your new
acquaintance sitting on the edge of his chair, or hers as the case may be
and so frequently is, with hands clutched in polite but painful restraint,
gills working up and down with impatience, eyes brightened with
desire, tongue hung in the middle, waiting for you to pause to catch
your breath, so that he or she may break in with a few personal
recollections along the same line. From a mere conversation it resolves
itself into a symptom symposium, and a perfectly splendid time is had
by all.
If an operation is such a good thing to talk about, why isn't it a good
thing to write about, too? That is what I wish to know. Besides, I need
the money. Verily, one always needs the money when one has but
recently escaped from the ministering clutches of the modern hospital.
Therefore I write.
It all dates back to the fair, bright morning when I went to call on a
prominent practitioner here in New York, whom I shall denominate as
Doctor X. I had a pain. I had had it for days. It was not a dependable,
locatable pain, such as a tummyache or a toothache is, which you can
put your hand on; but an indefinite, unsettled, undecided kind of pain,
which went wandering about from place to place inside of me like a
strange ghost lost in Cudjo's Cave. I never knew until then what the
personal sensations of a haunted house are. If only the measly thing
could have made up its mind to settle down somewhere and start light
housekeeping I think should have been better satisfied. I never had such
an uneasy tenant. Alongside of it a woman with the moving fever
would be comparatively a fixed and stationary object.
Having always, therefore, enjoyed perfectly riotous and absolutely

unbridled health, never feeling weak and distressed unless dinner
happened to be ten or fifteen minutes late, I was green regarding
physicians and the ways of physicians. But I knew Doctor X slightly,
having met him last summer in one of his hours of ease in the grand
stand at a ball game, when he was expressing a desire to cut the
umpire's throat from ear to ear, free of charge; and I remembered his
name, and remembered, too, that he had impressed me at the time as
being a person of character and decision and scholarly attainments.
He wore whiskers. Somehow in my mind whiskers are ever associated
with medical skill. I presume this is a heritage of my youth, though I
believe others labor under the same impression.
As I look back it seems to me that in childhood's days all the doctors in
our town wore whiskers.
I recall one old doctor down there in Kentucky who was practically
lurking in ambush all the time. All he needed was a few decoys out in
front of him and a pump gun to be a duck blind. He carried his calomel
about with him in