“The appeal was decisive. Without any further hesitation, Dr. Andrew took the Raja’s thin hands between his own and began to speak in the most confident tone about a wonderful new treatment recently discovered in Europe and employed as yet by only a handful of the most eminent physicians. Then, turning to the attendants who had been hovering all this time in the background, he ordered them out of the room. They did not understand the words; but his tone and accompanying gestures were unmistakably clear. They bowed and withdrew. Dr. Andrew took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves and started to make those famous magnetic passes, about which he had read with so much skeptical amusement in The Lancet.
From the crown of the head, over the face and down the trunk to the epigastrium, again and again until the patient falls into a trance—‘or until’ (he remembered the derisive comments of the anonymous writer of the article) ‘until the presiding charlatan shall choose to say that his dupe is now under the magnetic influence.’ Quackery, humbug and fraud. But all the same, all the same…He worked away in silence. Twenty passes, fifty passes. The sick man sighed and closed his eyes. Sixty, eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty. The heat was stifling, Dr. Andrew’s shirt was drenched with sweat, and his arms ached. Grimly he repeated the same absurd gesture. A hundred and fifty, a hundred and seventy-five, two hundred. It was all fraud and humbug; but all the same he was determined to make this poor devil go to sleep, even if it took him the whole day to do it. ‘You are going to sleep,’ he said aloud as he made the two hundred and eleventh pass. ‘You are going to sleep.’ The sick man seemed to sink more deeply into his pillows, and suddenly Dr. Andrew caught the sound of a rattling wheeze. ‘This time,’ he added quickly, ‘you are not going to choke.
There’s plenty of room for the air to pass, and you’re not going to choke.’ The Raja’s breathing grew quiet. Dr. Andrew made a few more passes, then decided that it would be safe to take a rest. He mopped his face, then rose, stretched his arms and took a couple of turns up and down the room. Sitting down again by the bed, he took one of the Raja’s sticklike wrists and felt for the pulse. An hour before it had been running at almost a hundred; now the rate had fallen to seventy. He raised the arm: the hand hung limp like a dead man’s. He let go, and the arm dropped by its own weight and lay, inert and unmoving, where it had fallen. ‘Your Highness,’ he said, and again, more loudly, ‘Your Highness.’ There was no answer. It was all quackery, humbug and fraud, but all the same it worked, it obviously worked.”
A large, brightly colored mantis fluttered down onto the rail at the foot of the bed, folded its pink and white wings, raised its small flat head, and stretched out its incredibly muscular front legs in the attitude of prayer. Dr. MacPhail pulled out a magnifying glass and bent forward to examine it.
“Gongylus gongyloides,” he pronounced. “It dresses itself up to look like a flower. When unwary flies and moths come sailing in to sip the nectar, it sips them. And if it’s a female, she eats her lovers.” He put the glass away and leaned back in his chair. “What one likes most about the universe,” he said to Will Farnaby, “is its wild improbability. Gongylus gongyloides, Homo sapiens, my great-grandfather’s introduction to Pala and hypnosis—what could be more unlikely?”
“Nothing,” said Will. “Except perhaps my introduction to Pala and hypnosis, Pala via a shipwreck and a precipice; hypnosis by way of a soliloquy about an English cathedral.”
Susila laughed. “Fortunately I didn’t have to make all those passes over you. In this climate! I really admire Dr. Andrew. It sometimes takes three hours to anesthetize a person with the passes.”
“But in the end he succeeded?”
“Triumphantly.”
“And did he actually perform the operation?”
“Yes, he actually performed the operation,” said Dr. MacPhail. “But not immediately. There had to be a long preparation. Dr. Andrew began by telling his patient that henceforward he would be able to swallow without pain. Then, for the next three weeks, he fed him up. And between meals he put him into trance and kept him asleep until it was time for another feeding. It’s wonderful what your body will do for you if you only give it a chance. The Raja gained twelve pounds and felt like a new man. A new man full of new hope and confidence. He knew he was going to come through his ordeal.
And so, incidentally, did Dr. Andrew. In the process of fortifying the Raja’s faith he had fortified his own. It was not a blind faith. The operation, he felt quite certain, was going to be successful. But this unshakable confidence did not prevent him from doing everything that might contribute to its success. Very early in the proceedings he started to work on the trance. The trance, he kept telling his patient, was becoming deeper every day, and on the day of the operation it would be much deeper than it had ever been before. It would also last longer. ‘You’ll sleep,’ he assured the Raja, ‘for four full hours after the operation’s over; and when you awake, you won’t feel the slightest pain.’ Dr. Andrew made these affirmations with a mixture of total skepticism and complete confidence.
Reason and past experience assured him that all this was impossible. But in the present context past experience had proved to be irrelevant. The impossible had already happened, several times. There was no reason why it shouldn’t happen again. The important thing was to say that it would happen—so he said it, again and again. All this was good; but better still was Dr. Andrew’s invention of the rehearsal.”
“Rehearsal of what?”
“Of the surgery. They ran through the procedure half a dozen times. The last rehearsal was on the morning of the operation. At six, Dr. Andrew came to the Raja’s room and, after a little cheerful talk, began to make the passes. In a few minutes the patient was in deep trance. Stage by stage, Dr. Andrew described what he was going to do. Touching the cheekbone near the Raja’s right eye, he said, ‘I begin by stretching the skin. And now with this scalpel’ (and he drew the tip of a pencil across the cheek) ‘I make an incision. You feel no pain, of course—not even the slightest discomfort. And now the underlying tissues are being cut and you still feel nothing at all. You just lie there, comfortably asleep, while I dissect the cheek back to the nose.
Every now and then I stop to tie a blood vessel; then I go on again. And when that part of the work is done, I’m ready to start on the tumor. It has its roots there in the antrum and it has grown upwards, under the cheekbone, into the eye socket, and downwards into the gullet. And as I cut it loose, you lie there as before, feeling nothing, perfectly comfortable, completely relaxed. And now I lift your head.’ Suiting his action to the words, he lifted the Raja’s head and bent it forward on the limp neck. ‘I lift it and bend it so that you can get rid of the blood that’s run down into your mouth and throat. Some of the blood has got into your windpipe, and you cough a little to get rid of it; but it doesn’t wake you.’
The Raja coughed once or twice, then, when Dr. Andrew released his hold, dropped back onto the pillows, still fast asleep. ‘And you don’t choke even when I work on the lower end of the tumor in your gullet.’ Dr. Andrew opened the Raja’s mouth and thrust two fingers down his throat. ‘It’s just a question of pulling it loose, that’s all. Nothing in that to make you choke. And if you have to cough up the blood, you can do it in your sleep. Yes, in your sleep, in this deep, deep sleep.’
“That was the end of the rehearsal. Ten minutes later, after making some more passes and telling his patient to sleep still more deeply, Dr. Andrew began the operation. He stretched the skin, he made the incision, he dissected the cheek, he cut the tumor away from its roots in the antrum. The Raja lay there perfectly relaxed, his pulse firm and steady at seventy-five, feeling no more pain than he had felt during the make-believe of the rehearsal. Dr. Andrew worked on the throat; there was no choking. The blood flowed into the windpipe; the Raja coughed but did not awake. Four hours after the operation was over, he was still sleeping; then, punctual to the minute, he opened his eyes, smiled at Dr. Andrew between his bandages and asked, in his singsong Cockney, when the operation was to start. After a feeding and a sponging, he was given some more passes and told to sleep for four more hours and to get well quickly. Dr. Andrew kept
