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Boy
by
Roald Dahl
When my father was fourteen, which is still more than one hundred years ago,
he was up on the roof of the family house replacing some loose tiles when
he slipped and fell. He broke his left arm below the elbow. Somebody ran to
fetch the doctor, and half an hour later this gentleman made a majestic and
drunken arrival in his horse-drawn buggy. He was so drunk that he mistook
the fractured elbow for a dislocated shoulder.
‘We’ll soon put this back into place!’ he cried out, and
two men were called off the street to help with the pulling. They were instructed
to hold my father by the waist while the doctor grabbed him by the wrist of
the broken arm and shouted, ‘Pull men, pull! Pull has hard as you can!’
The pain must have been excruciating. The victim screamed, and his mother,
who was watching the performance in horror, shouted ‘Stop!’ but
by then the pullers had done so much damage that a splinter of bone was sticking
out through the skin of the forearm.
That was in 1877 and orthopaedic surgery was not what it is today. So they
simply amputated the arm at the elbow, and for the rest of his life my father
had to manage with one arm…
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