I became so worried about his condition by the afternoon that I called into consultation a local veterinary surgeon and our local doctor. The latter, I think, was somewhat surprised, that he should be asked to take a chimpanzee onto his panel, but he agreed. It was plain that Chumley’s jaw and ear would have to be examined carefully, and I knew that in his present state he would not allow that, so it was agreed that we would have to anaesthetize him. This is what had to be done, but how to do it was another matter. Eventually, it was decided that I should try to give Chumley an injection of a tranquilizer which would, we hoped, have him in an agreeable frame of mind by the evening to accept an anaesthetic. The problem was whether Chumley was going to let me give him the injection. He was lying huddled up in his bed of straw, his back towards me, and I could see he was in great pain, for he never even looked round to see who had opened the door of his cage. I talked to him, in my best bedside manner, for a quarter of an hour or so, and at the end of that time he was allowing me to stroke his back and legs. This was a great advance, for up till now he had not let me come within stroking distance. Then, plucking up my courage, and still talking feverishly, I picked up the hypodermic and swiftly slipped the needle into the flesh of his thigh. To my relief, he gave no sign of having noticed it. As gently and as slowly as I could, I pressed the plunger and injected the tranquilizer. He must have felt this, for he gave a tiny, rather plaintive hoot, but he was too apathetic to worry about it. Still talking cheerful nonsense, I closed the door of his bedroom and left the drug to take effect.
That evening Dr Taylor and Mr Blampied, the veterinary, arrived, and I reported that the tranquilizer had taken effect: Chumley was in a semi-doped condition, but even so, he would not let me examine his ear. So we repaired to his boudoir, outside of which I had rigged up some strong lights and a trestle-table on which to lay our patient. Dr Taylor poured ether onto a mask, and I opened Chumley’s bedroom door, leaned in, and placed the mask gently over his face. He made one or two half-hearted attempts to push it away with his hand, but the ether combined with the tranquilizer was too much for him, and he slipped into unconsciousness rapidly. As soon as he was completely under, we hauled him out of the cage and laid him on the trestle-table, still keeping the mask over his face. Then the experts went to work. First his ear was examined, and found to be perfectly healthy; just for good measure, we examined his other ear as well, and that, too, was all right. We then opened his mouth and carefully checked his teeth: they were an array of perfect, glistening white dentures without a speck of decay on any of them. We examined his cheeks, his jaw, and the whole of his head, and could not find a single thing wrong. We looked at his neck and shoulders, with the same result. As far as we could ascertain, there was nothing the matter with Chumley whatsoever, and yet something had been causing him considerable pain. Dr Taylor and Mr Blampied departed, much mystified, and I carried Chumley into the house, wrapped in a blanket, and put him on a camp-bed in front of the drawing-room fire. Then Jacquie brought more blankets, which we piled on top of him, and we sat down to wait for the anaesthetic to wear off.
Lying there, his eyes closed, breathing out ether fumes stertorously, he looked like a slightly satanic cherub who, tired out after a day’s mischief-making, was taking a well-earned rest. The amount of ether he was expelling from his lungs made the whole room reek, so that we were forced to open a window. It was about half an hour before he began to sigh deeply and twitch, as a preliminary to regaining consciousness, and I went over and sat by the bedside with a cup of water ready, since I knew from experience the dreadful thirst that assails one on coming out from under an anaesthetic. In a few minutes Chumley opened his eyes, and as soon as he saw me he gave a feeble hoot of greeting and held out his hand, in spite of the fact that he was still half asleep. I held up his head and put the cup to his lips and he sucked at the water greedily before the ether overcame him again and he sank back into sleep. I decided that an ordinary cup was too unwieldy to give him drinks, as a considerable quantity of liquid was spilled. I managed, by ringing up my friends, to procure an invalid’s cup, one of those articles that resemble deformed teapots, and the next time Chumley woke up this proved a great success, as he could suck water out of the spout without having to sit up.
Although he recognized us, he was still in a very drugged and stupid state, and so I decided that I would spend the night sleeping on the sofa near him, in case he awakened and wanted anything. Having given him another drink, I made up my bed on the sofa, turned out the light, and dozed off. About two o’clock in the morning I was awakened by a crash in the far corner of the room. I hastily put on the light to find that Chumley was awake and wandering round the room, like a drunken man, barging into all the furniture. As soon as the light came on and he saw me, he uttered a scream of joy, staggered across the room, and insisted on embracing and kissing me before gulping down a vast drink of water. I then helped him back on to his bed and covered him with his blankets, and he slept peacefully until daylight.
He spent the day lying quietly on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He ate a few grapes and drank great quantities of glucose and water, which was encouraging. The most encouraging thing, however, was that he no longer held the side of his face and did not appear to be suffering any pain. In some extraordinary way we seemed to have cured him without doing anything. When Dr Taylor telephoned later that day to find out how Chumley was faring I explained this to him, and he was as puzzled as I. Then, later on, he rang up to say that he had thought of a possible explanation: Chumley may have been suffering from a slipped disc. This could have caused intense pain in the nerves of jaw and ear, without there being anything external to show what caused it. When we had Chumley limp and relaxed under the anaesthetic we pulled his head around quite a lot during our examination, and probably pushed the disc back into place, without realizing it. Mr Blampied agreed with this diagnosis. We had no proof, of course, but certainly Chumley was completely cured, and there was no recurrence of the pain. He had naturally lost a lot of weight during his illness, and so for two or three weeks he was kept in a specially heated cage and fed on every delicacy. Within a very short time he had put on weight and was his old self, so that anyone who went near his cage was showered with handfuls of sawdust. This, I presume, was Chumley’s way of thanking us.