The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

In all the time I had been in the House of Life, I had not once seen Ptahor, for trepanning was rare, and during my training period I had not been allowed to attend the specialists at their treatments and operations. Now, Ptahor was carried in haste from his villa to the House of Life. He cleansed himself in the purifying room, and I was careful to be at hand. He was as bald as ever, his face had grown wrinkled, and his cheeks hung lugubriously on either side of his discontented old mouth. He recognised me, smiled and said, “Is it you, Sinuhe? Have you come this far, son of Senmut?” He handed me a black wooden box in which he kept his instruments and bade me follow him. This was an unmerited honour that even a royal physician might have envied me, and I bore myself accordingly.

“I must test the steadiness of my hand, said Ptahor. “We will open a skull or two here, to see how it goes.” His eyes were watery, and his hands trembled slightly. We went into a room in which lay incurables, paralytics and those with head injuries. Ptahor examined a few and chose an old man for whom death would come as a release, also a strong slave who had lost his speech and the use of his limbs from a blow to the head during a street brawl. They were given narcotics to drink and were then taken to the operating theatre and cleansed. Ptahor washed his instruments and purified them in fire by himself.

My task was to shave the heads of both patients with the keenest of razors. Then the heads were cleaned and washed once more, the scalps massaged with a numbing salve, and Ptahor was ready for his work. First, he made an incision in the scalp of the old man and pushed the edges back regardless of the copious flow of blood. Then with swift movements, he bored a hole in the bared skull with a large tubular bore and lifted out the circle of bone. The old man began to groan, and his face turned blue.

“I see nothing the matter with his head,” said Ptahor, as he replaced the bit of bone, stitched the edges of the scalp together and bandaged the head whereupon the old man gave up the ghost.

“My hands appear to tremble somewhat,” remarked Ptahor. “Perhaps one of the young men would bring me a cup of wine.” The onlookers, besides the teachers in the House of Life, consisted of students who were specialising in skulls. When Ptahor had had his wine, he turned his attention to the slave, who had been bound and drugged, yet still sat savagely glowering at us. Ptahor asked that he might be bound yet more firmly and that his head might be gripped in a vice that not even a giant could have shifted. Ptahor then opened up the scalp and this time was careful to stanch the flow of blood. The veins at the edges of the incision were cauterised and the blood stopped by special medicaments. Ptahor let other doctors do this, to spare his own hands. In the House of Life, there was as a rule a blood stauncher, a man of no education whose mere presence would stop a flow of blood in a short time, but Ptahor wished this to be a lecture and desired also to save his strength for Pharaoh.

When Ptahor had cleansed the outside of the skull, he pointed out to us the place where the bone had been crushed in. By means of bore, saw and forceps, he removed a piece of skull as large as the palm of one’s hand and then showed us how clotted blood had gathered around the white convolutions of the brain. With infinite care, he removed the blood bit by bit and freed a bone splinter that had been forced into the brain substance. This operation took some time, so each pupil could follow his movements and impress the look of a brain upon his own memory. Next, Ptahor closed the opening with a plate of silver that had been prepared meanwhile to correspond in shape to the piece of bone that had been removed and fixed it firmly in position with tiny clips. Then he stitched the edges of the wound together, bandaged it and said, “Wake the man”. For the patient had lost consciousness long ago.

The slave was freed from his bonds, wine was poured down his throat, and he was given strong drugs to inhale. Presently, he sat up and let forth a stream of curses. It was a miracle no one who had not witnessed it could have believed, for the fellow had previously been dumb and unable to move his limbs. This time, I had no need to ask why, for Ptahor explained that the bone splinter and the blood on the surface of the brain had been the cause of the symptoms.

“If he is not dead within three days, he is cured,” said Ptahor. “In two weeks, he will be able to thrash the man who stoned him. I do not think he will die.”