Of the two doctors it was undoubtedly Dr Dunstaple who bad the largest number of adherents; he had been the civil surgeon in Krishnapur for some years and was known to everyone as a kindly and paternal man. In more peaceful times he had assisted many of the ladies of the cantonment in childbirth. Besides, he was what they felt a doctor ought to be: a family man, with authority and good humour. After all, when you are ill, or when someone whom you love is ill, what you most want is someone to take the responsibility. Dr Dunstaple was very good at doing this.
By contrast, though Dr McNab also possessed authority and combined it with a calm and dignified manner, he seemed to lack Dr Dunstaple’s good humour. He seldom smiled. He seemed to take a pessimistic view of your complaint, whatever it was. No doubt this was only his manner. Scots very often appear bleak in the eyes of the English. But the garrison, distressed by the revelation that Dr McNab had actually written a description in his diary of his own wife’s death by cholera, feared that in the case of Dr McNab even the caricature of a Scot might be mild in comparison with the truth; they could think of few less tantalizing prospects than that their deaths should become medical statistics. On the other hand, nobody could have failed to notice that Dr Dunstaple was in a state approaching nervous collapse. His denunciations and his shouting made even his staunchest admirers wonder sometimes whether it might not be better to change their allegiance to the calmer Dr McNab. But, of course, there was still no getting round the fact that Dr Dunstaple was the more experienced, and hence the more reliable, of the two.
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 socalled 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 Dunstaple, you will hardly make any progress if you continue to abuse Dr McNab in this way. If you insist on a public debate then I suggest you give us your views in a more suitable manner.”
“Certainly,” said Dr Dunstaple. His face was flushed, his eyes glinting with excitement; he seemed to be having difficulty breathing, too, and he spoke so rapidly that he slurred his words. “But first ladies and gentlemen, you should know that Dr McNab holds the discredited belief that you catch cholera by drinking … more precisely, that in cholera the morbific matter is taken into the alimentary canal causing diarrhoea, that the poison is at the same time reproduced in the intestines and passes out with the discharges, and that by these so-called ‘rice-water’ discharges becoming mingled with the drinkingwater of others the disease is communicated from one person to another continually multiplying itself as it goes. I think that Dr McNab would not disagree with that.”
“I’m grateful to you for such an accurate statement of my beliefs.” Could it be that McNab was actually smiling? Probably not, but there had certainly been a tremor at each corner of his mouth.
“Let me now read to you the conclusion of Dr Baly in his Report on Epidemic Cholera, drawn up at the desire of the Royal College of Physicians and published in 1854. Dr Baly finds the only theory satisfactorily supported by evidence is that ‘which regards the cause of cholera as a matter increasing by some process, whether chemical or organic, in impure or damp air’ … I repeat, ‘in impure or damp air’.” Dr Dunstaple paused triumphantly for a moment to allow the significance of this to seep in.
Many supporters of Dr McNab exchanged glances of dismay at the words they had just heard. They had not realized that Dr Dunstaple had the support of the Royal College of Physicians … and felt distinctly aggrieved that they had not been told that such an august body disagreed with their own man. Two or three of Dr McNab’s supporters wasted no time in surreptitiously slipping their cards of emergency instructions from their pockets, crossing out the name McNab, and substituting that of his rival, before settling back to watch their new champion in the lists. The Magistrate noted this with satisfaction. How much more easily they were swayed by prestige than by arguments!
Meanwhile Dr Dunstaple was continuing to disprove Dr McNab’s drinking-water theories.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the fact that cholera is conveyed in the atmosphere is amply supported by the epidemic in Newcastle in 1853 when it became clear that during the months of September and October an invisible cholera cloud was suspended over the town. Few persons living in Newcastle during this period escaped without suffering some of the symptoms that are inescapably associated with cholera, if not the disease itself. They suffered from pains in the head or indescribable sensations of uneasiness in the bowels. Furthermore, the fact of strangers coming into Newcastle from a distance in perfect health … and not having had any contact with cholera cases … being then suddenly seized with premonitory symptoms, and speedily passing into collapse, proves that it was the result of atmospheric infection.”