“Pages
of Every-Day Life” by Charles S. Moody, B.S., M.D., Mullan, Idaho, Surgeon at
Snowstorm Mine, in Medical Brief, Vol.
36, No. 2, February, 1908
Ah, the wonderful dreams that filled our student days of the
great golden future that was to open up before us when we were launched like so
many vessels out of the port of the dear old college, and began buffeting the
waves of fortune upon the sea of professional life! My life has been made up
largely of dreams, of which only too few, alas, have ever come true. Yet a few
of them have; enough, perhaps, to cause me not to regret the dreaming. When I
was struggling along away back yonder, looking anxiously forward to the time
when I should be able to affix to my name the cabalistic letters that would
constitute me one of the elect, I recall how vividly I envied those other happy
mortals upon whom Fortuna had shed her radiant smiles; those who were not
compelled to toil and save night and day, and deny themselves oftentimes the
very necessities of life that they might accumulate sufficient funds wherewith
to push forward in pursuit of learning. How many of you were compelled to saw
cordwood, split fence posts, chop slabs in a saw mill, raft logs on a river,
mine coal, herd cattle for the means to finish your education? How many of you
who were so situated often felt tempted to throw the whole thing overboard and
call it quits; but there was always something inside you that prevented your
doing it; something that kept you struggling and toiling upward toward a goal,
what thought it seemed that the light would never penetrate the clouds of
darkness and poverty that encompassed you?
To all such I can stretch forth the hand of sympathy and
fellowship, for it was so that I toiled and watched the little hoard of dollars
grow—how very, very slowly they great—until I had barely enough, with the most
biting economy, to carry me through. How I can congratulate a man with a wife,
during such a trial, as was my wife. Do you realize that a woman never loses
her courage in times like these? Many and many a night, when all looked black
and gloomy, the little woman stood by my side, looking with the eye of faith in
me, and love for me, when I could see the bright gleam that betokened the dawn
beyond the night cloud. It was her faith, her love, her sublime courage, that
buoyed us both up with the belief that it would all come out as it was in our
dreams. In addition to a wife like mine, thrice blessed is he who is the father
of a baby. Do you appreciate that the historical jaunt of the Israelites
through the furnace was nothing compared to what you would do for that
baby? A squeeze of a pair of tender arms
around your neck will screw the courage of any man up at about 300 to the
square, and keep it there.
When I finally got enough together to meet my modest needs,
I set out for college, with her waving a brave farewell from the depot
platform. She could not go for there was not enough for both. Hers was the
harder part. To remain at home in the country, with nothing to occupy her time,
and only to wait, was infinitely more difficult than to be in a city where all
was noise and stir. The city was strange to me at first. I had never been
before in a great city, and everything confused me. I was half afraid of the
noise. I recall, with delight, the chance that presented itself for me to wait
on the table in a cheap eating house, and thus earn a small sum with which I
bought much-needed books. I have those old books yet, and they are among my
treasures—no money could buy them.
All through my college days I dreamed the beautiful dreams.
Wealth, with all its allurements, should be mine. Fame should come and perch
upon my banner. Learning vast should be my portion, and all humanity should be
better for my having lived. I read of the deeds of healing done by the
illustrious ones of our profession, and, in my dreams, I emulated them. The
poor, the sick, the lame, the halt, the blind, should never appeal to me in
vain. In the Elysium that I had painted upon the canvas of the future, with
colors stolen from the hues of the rainbow, there should be no envy, no
jealousy, no striving for first place. Those for whom I toiled should look to
me as their guide, counselor, friend. They should come to me with their griefs,
and I should assist in assuaging them. My brethren in the profession should be
my firm friends and I theirs. The beautiful lessons of the code should be our
lessons, and we should live them in our everyday life. Yes, it was a world of
dreams, and they are still but dreams, for so few; oh, so very few of them have
ever reached the material stage. I am now a middle-aged country doctor, my hair
has already begun to show the path made by the frosts of Time, and I begin to
feel the need of aids to vision when I read long at night. I am slightly
rheumatic in damp weather, and have to protect my throat when I go out at
night. I have failed to outstrip my brother in the race for gain; my
opportunities for doing great good have never materialized. My friends are as
the friends of all other men; some true, many, many false. My professional
brethren have not always treated me according to the rules laid down in the
code of ethics, and sometimes I have retaliated in kind. Yet there have been
compensations for the dreams that came not true. One of them I will relate to
you, in the hope that you, too, my brother, who, maybe, had dreams as well as
I, may look beneath the grime and greed of this world and see some things in
your career that are not covered with the slime of selfishness, as most things
here are.
Fate, that old jade, delights to play us most scurvy tricks
at times. For some she spins the wheel of Fortune until it halts at the zenith,
others she spills into the nadir of adversity; and none may say why the one and
why the other. The town lies in a narrow river valley, with great rock-ribbed
hills towering almost to the skies on every side, shutting out the sun, save
for a few hours at midday. Within the deep recesses of these gaunt, scarred
hills, lies untold wealth in silver, lead and copper. Far above the town,
almost at the summit of one of the highest mountains, lies the great mine of
which I am one of the minor factors. A narrow-gauge railroad clambers up the
mountain side, creeping around the shoulders of the hill; ever creeping higher
and higher, until finally it pauses at the yawning mouth of the mine, just
beneath the great, cavernous ore bins that hold almost the wealth of an empire.
Below the town, and at the lower end of the track, stand the immense mills that
are busy, all the year, in eating the ore-laden rock, masticating it between
massive steel jaws, and sending it forth into the separators to be rattled, and
shaken and churned until it gives its burden of precious metal. Every hour the
little, yet powerful, engine toils up the steep track, pushing in front its
train of cars laden with timbers for the mine; then it clatters down again,
leading the same cars laden with ore for the mill.
There is no more hazardous occupation that than of
underground mining. What though the mines take every precaution, and throw
around their men every safeguard, still every year hundreds of miners are
maimed for life, or killed outright. Tons and tons of high explosives are used
in blasting down the ore-bearing quartz. Sometimes one of these blasts fails to
explode, then it becomes the duty of the miner to drill out the powder and
recharge the hole. The miner goes about this task very much as you would about making
your round of daily calls. It is to him only an incident in his round of labor.
So long as luck favors him all is well, but some day there is an explosion, and
then a narrow grave on a hillside, or, at best, a sojourn in the hospital, from
which he emerges a broken and maimed being, doomed to spend his days in misery
and pain. Dark and treacherous holes exist throughout the mine. In the
half-light of this underground world some miner stumbles, and his mates gather
him up, perhaps, hundreds of feet below, an inert mass of bruised flesh and
broken bones. A great mass of rock, loosened by the jar of the blasts, lets go
its hold upon the wall and comes hurtling down the slope, leaving death in its
wake. Death lurks in a hundred forms in the deeps of the mine. The miner walks
hand in hand with him daily, and grows callous, just as do soldiers inured to
battle.
It is the fate of our profession to look upon death in many
forms and we, too, grow callous as do the soldiers. I have never yet been able,
however, to grow callous to the visitation in the mine. There is something so
gloomy about death there in the gloom and grime, that it sends a thrill of pity
through my heart.
Just the other night I wished that those of my professional
friends who are permitted to make their rounds in a motor car or behind a fast
pair of horses, might have been with me upon one of my missions of mercy. That
you may, in some degree, appreciate what the “other side” is like, I will
describe to you as well as I am able, the trip that was mine.
It was growing dark. I was just sitting down to my evening
meal, and was rejoicing in the prospect of being able to spend an evening by
the cozy fire with my loved ones, when the telephone bell set up its insistent
jangle. I was connected with the mine, and found myself in conversation with
the shift boss: “Catch the last trip up, and come at once,” was his message.
Well I knew that the message was urgent. No common accident would have induced
the shift boss to telephone me that inclement night. Somewhere in the deep
recesses of that immense subterranean burrow lay a man, and, perhaps, several
men, moaning out their lives in the darkness. That he was not dead was
evidenced by the message. Had he been dead, there had been no call for my
services. Humanity dictated that I should go at once. I snatched a few bites of
food and rank a hot cup of coffee, then, donning my furs and grasping my
emergency bag, plunged into the night. It was snowing as it only can snow here
in the higher range. Great white feathery flakes came floating down out of the
Stygian gloom, and rapped the earth in a white pall. The little engine was
puffing around the last curve below town on its down trip. I must needs hurry,
if I would ride back to the mine on it. When I reached the ore-bins I found the
engine stalled, and the day’s work completed. They were not going back to the
mine that night. It was possible to get them to run the engine out and take me
up, but it would have entailed the unwinding of so many miles of red tape that
I resolved to make the journey on foot. Divesting myself of my fur coat and
gloves, and slinging my bag over my shoulder, I plunged into the gloom. One by
one the lights of the mill glimmered and flickered out. The steady thump of the
ore crushers grew fainter and fainter, until there was silence. Such silences
as is only known in the mountains when the snow if falling. As I rounded the
first curve the electric lights of the town lay far below me, a faint spot of
hazy light in the fog of snow, visible, and no more. These, too, soon faded and
left me in the immense darkness again. Higher and higher I climbed up the
mountain side, until I was above the storm clouds, and a wintry moon struggled
through the haze and lessened the intense darkness. Looking down from my lofty
position I could see the snowstorm in great white billowy masses rolling down the
narrow valley between the hills. Then, the last mist fled before the night wind
that was chill from off the mountain peaks, and the hoary tops of the range
sprang into view with startling clearness, as though some gigantic showman had
projected them upon a canvas for a Titanic audience. How somber and vast they
seemed when viewed thus, and how “pigmy” man was by their side—man, who, with
his powerful engines of destruction, was tearing great gaunt holes in their
sides, burrowing along the mineral veins and extracting the precious ore that
had lain there since the beginning of Time.
Miles above the tower, upon the bald shoulder of the
mountain, perched the powder-house, with its warning legend: “Danger!” I paused to rest, and,
resting, reflected, what would be the destructive consequences should some
person touch a match to a fuse connected with the tons and tons of Hercules
stored in that iron structure. Then I went on to where the track crosses a deep
canyon of a flimsy wooden trestle, that seemed ridiculously inadequate to
sustain the immense weight that passed over it every day. Again I thought of
what would happen should a rail become misplaced. I could hear the gurgling of
the waters of the mountain torrent hundreds of feet below, as though they were
chuckling at the idea, some day, of the engine and its train of cars plunging
into the abyss. On a little way round the curve, and I could see the lights at
the ore-bins, glimmering in the distance like stars in an autumn sky. Then the
head house loomed gigantic and black out of the darkness. Now, I could hear the
steady thump of the air compressor that pumped life into the depth of the mine,
and the roar of the smith’s forge, and the ring of the beaten metal. At length
the mount of the mine itself yawned, and my journey was all be at an end.
At the entrance of the mine stood several men, their lighted
candles flaring in the air-current and lighting up the scene weirdly. Half a
mile back in the tunnel lay a man crushed by the falling of half a ton of rock.
We must hasten and reach him. In another moment we are seated in an ore-car,
and are being rapidly hauled into the tunnel. The tunnel is not direct, but
follows the windings of the ore body. By and buy we reach a point where the
main tunnel branches into a perfect labyrinth of underground streets. I thought
how easily a man unacquainted with the work might become hopelessly lost in the
maze. Work was going on as though nothing had happened. Far away in the
distance sounded the blasts like the report f embattled cannon. It was a
battle; a battle with the Titanic forces of Nature. Out of various holes in the
rock the laden cars came rumbling toward us, to disappear in the darkness. We
reach at last a point where all the tracks seem to come together. I hear the
puffing of the hosting machinery as it labors at winding its long steel cable
about the big iron drum. Water from the roof falls over us in a shower. We seat
ourselves in the iron cage, the shift boss rings a bell on the wall, and we
begin to drop rapidly into darkness. Down, down until it seems as though we are
never to reach bottom. The car stops with a bump, and we alight from it and
stand upon the floor of one of the lower levels, hundreds of feet from the
surface. Another short walk and we are at the scene of the accident. The
injured man is lying upon a hastily-improvised couch made from the jackets of
his fellow workmen. He is moaning with pain. A hasty inspection tells the
story. The great weight, in falling, has rolled across his legs in such a
manner as to crush them out of all semblance to human appendages. To even the
uninitiated it is evident that an amputation is necessary. It is not now the
problem of amputation that troubles me so much as that of how to get him to a
place where the surgery may be done. Our good old Spencerian copybook told us
something about “necessity being the mother of invention.” The doctor, out here
in the West, without adaptability, is a ship at sea without a rudder. There are
no instrument-makers here to whom you can appeal in times of need who will
furnish you with something that will just fit your case. No, out here we have
to make it ourselves, and what’s more, have to know how to make it. There is no
doubt that there are many of you who would crack a very superior sort of smile
at some of the rough appliances we are compelled to use, but being honest men,
you would not smile at the results that we attain, and that’s what we are all
after—results. In this instance I made, in a very few minutes, a quite
efficient set of fracture boxes out of an empty dynamite box. Not very elegant
in design, perhaps, but very effective in operation. After immobilizing the
limbs, the next problem was to get the man to the surface. This was
accomplished by taking a piece of lagging timber two by twenty-two inches, six
feet long, and securely strapping the patient to it. Standing the man upright
in the “skip,” he was hoisted to the upper works and loaded into an ore-car.
You will appreciate the fact that all this was not done without great pain to
the patient, but he never murmured. These men are not of the murmuring kind.
Grinding his teeth together to choke back the moan that was endeavoring to
escape his lips, he lay with anxious eyes and watched the manipulations
necessary to his transportation, and when his friends hoisted him into the ore
“skip,” he even smiled as he bade them good-bye. The gray dawn came creeping
down the mountain, and the little engine came creeping up at the same time. My
patient was lying by the fire in the blacksmith shop mercifully asleep, as the
result of an hypodermic. Gently we placed him on the engine and lowered him
down the hill, where a conveyance carried him to the hospital. By noon he was
lying in his cot in the ward minus two legs, but smiling and cheerful,
optimistic in his belief that he would get well, and be out soon. We will leave
him in his bed under the care of a white-capped nurse, who will attend him as
carefully and lovingly as though he were the heir to millions instead of a poor
workman from the grime of the mine.
