The man was probably just a normal guy, albeit a history geek, and he really knew his stuff. Adult me recognizes this, and appreciates that such a man would take his own time and money to be at a historical site to properly pass down its events, and to impress upon others the importance, gravity, and sanctity of the area. That takes a lot of dedication, and more give-a-fuck than I could muster on doomsday, and to choose to direct such energies at educating is commendable.
Buuuuut me back then was too busy thinking up dick jokes to notice, and so here's roughly nine or so pages of them. Enjoy.
Concerning the Origin of the Term "Medicine"
by
Jeff Hopkins
by
Jeff Hopkins
Spring
was coming early to Maryland, and the concrete walkways winding through
Antietam Battlefield National Park were dry and clear of ice. The morning was
still cold, and the first-year medical students of the Armed Forces Medical
University wore field jackets over their uniforms. The students all wore the
gold bars of ensigns and 2nd lieutenants and were dressed in the colorful
camouflage of the Army, Navy and Air Force. They marched in a gaggle out of sync
with the cadence, resembling a school of drunken tropical fish. Ahead,
underneath a stand of trees stood a small tent with what looked like a small
whale sitting in it behind a table laden with tools.
The
company commander calling the cadence had been through this particular drill
three times over. Each year, the university sent its plebian medical
students to Antietam to learn about battlefield medicine during the Civil War
to give them an idea of how grisly a war could be, and each year he was tapped
to “drive the bus,” much to his disappointment. The majority of the students
had been officers in the military for little more than the four months they had
been in school, and their greenness showed in more than just their uniforms.
“Cumpnee…halt!” cried the company
commander, and the train of students slowed to a stop, with several in the back
bumping into the students in front of them. It was a mockery of military
bearing, in perfect balance with the mockery of the human form watching them
from the tent. The CC gave the order to fall out, and the students gathered
around the tent to listen to the civil war actor who would be their
teacher for the next half-hour.
Drinking in the
stature of their instructor, their first thoughts were of heart conditions
associated with hyper-obesity. Well, not all of them; some of them marveled at
how modern craftsmanship had progressed, that such a light, small stool could
support such a morbidly fat man.
Still others in
the throng of first-year military medical students surrounding his tent thought
of the stench emanating from the man's seldom-washed Civil War army uniform,
his wire-brush hair, and the bottles and instruments which laid out before him.
“Alright, gather
around, and keep it quiet, I don't want to have to talk over you," he
said. "Every year we get a new batch of butter bars wandering through
here, and it's my job to teach you a little about Civil War battlefield
medicine.
"To start, my
name's Bob Denver, I was a Union Army medic in the Civil War. A lot of you new,
young med-school types haven't learned much history, or have maybe bullshat
your way through a class or two, but remain naive about the finer points,"
Denver said, absently scratching his crotch.
"The Civil
War was actually a direct result of the American Revolutionary War. Yep. The
British were some smart, hardy, psychotic men. They used to paint their barns
with our blood. The way they'd lay on at least five or six coats of blood with
a paintbrush earned them the nickname "Redcoats," which is where the
term originated."
Someone coughed.
"Yeah, we
were pretty tired of that, so we decided to say fuck all that smart shit and
just fight ourselves," Denver went on. "So we divvied up and picked
teams, hammered out the conditions of war, you know all that political crap. We
figured, 'Sure, it's a war, but we can at least be civil about it,' which is
where the term Civil War originated.”
One medical
student in the crowd piped up.
"Sir, I don't
think that's actually how-"
"No talking
until I'm through, then we'll have time for questions and suppositions,"
Denver interrupted, and ignoring the dubious looks of the students, went on.
"You're
probably wondering why my tent has a rickety sign on it that reads 'Dr. Peeps.'
Well, my specialty was urology. 'Dr. Peeps, P.Ph.D., nice to peep you' was how
I'd typically introduce myself.
"You're also wondering,"
Denver began, and paused to swig from a large bottle in a brown paper sack. He
then burped greasily. "…about the extra 'P' in my degree. Well, considering
I worked with peepees all day, it only seems appropriate. The joke around the
medical tent in those days was that the acronym PPhD meant 'Piss-Poor Health
Department,' or my personal favorite, 'Pork Pulled: Hundred Dollars.”
"However, the
first definition is a little closer to the truth. Medical training in those
days was very primitive; my final anatomy practical exam went like this,"
Denver said. Then, pointing in turn to each of his nipples, followed by his
crotch and ass, recited, "milk, milk, lemonade, around the corner, fudge
is made."
"Still,"
he went on, "I'm much happier I became a PPhD rather than a PooPoohD. The
PooPoohD training was a lot more intensive, but the pay was shitty."
Denver howled with
laughter at this, jostling his giant belly, which rippled in long, slow waves.
His stool creaked.
"I'm kidding.
Didn't matter anyway; there was typically only one of the two at a camp at any
time; the Army didn't have enough money to supply both. Consequently, if you
were up in the peeps, you were down in the dumps, which is where the term
originated.
"Funny story;
we weren't actually called 'urologists' back then. They called us 'pianists,'
somewhat because it sounded like a high-tech version of the word 'penis,' but
mostly just because we liked to play with our instruments."
Denver grinned at
the crowd. When no one laughed, the smile slowly turned to a scowl.
"Well it was
funny to me," Denver growled.
“Anyway,
like I said, I was a urologist, and these instruments here all have to do with
my practice. You’re thinking, ‘wow, what use was a urologist to a Civil War
soldier?’ but there were a lot of dick ailments a soldier could have,” Denver
went on. “British soldiers were motivated and vicious, but they were horrible
shots. They were trained to aim for center-mass, but when they missed, they
tended to miss low.”
Denver picked up a
series of small pipettes, which were each sized a little larger at one end than
the one preceding it.
“Urethritis
was a big problem for the dick-hurt soldier. They were all commanded to drink
as much water as possible to keep from getting dehydrated, and when they
couldn’t pee, they’d swell up like bearded, stinky sponges. These were used to
gauge out the urethra, and allow urine to flow. We’d stick ‘em in, then pull
them out and go to the next larger size. We would “gauge” the reaction of the
soldier upon each insertion: if he didn’t squirm, it wasn’t big enough. If he
screamed, we were golden. This is where the term “to gauge something out”
originated. See? You came for a medical lesson, you got an English lesson too!”
Denver said.
“Sometimes,
we’d gauge it out too far. The soldier’s dick would constantly leak, in some
cases, flowing like a spigot. The solution: corks. It wasn’t uncommon to hear,
‘Doc, we got a leaker!’ which would then be answered with, ‘Awww, put a cork in
it!’ which is where the term originated. You see these corks in these bottles?”
Denver asked, indicating the corked bottles before him with various colored
powders and minerals in them. “These are the corks we would use. Some of them
still have blood and urine on them. It’s like a smelly, blood-flecked fossil.”
“Sir,
weren’t medics worried about contaminating the urethra with the medications
kept in the corked bottles? What would happen if a patient had an allergy to
one of those medications, and you put the contaminated cork in direct contact
with a bodily opening?” A student asked.
“Oh
these bottles aren’t full of medications, hahaha!” Denver laughed. “They’re not
even really supposed to be bottles! They’re civil war cork-holders. They just
function as bottles too, by coincidence. This stuff in here, well, let me put
it this way, have you ever been to one of those touristy places, where they sell
sand-birds? That’s sorta where I got the idea to put colorful shit in these
bottles, just to pretty them up, like.”
Five
or six students grunted in disgust, and trudged away towards the visitor
center.
“Corks
were fine and good, assuming the economy was ok at the time, and you had enough
provisions. But we ran out of corks pretty quick in the field,” Denver went on,
ignoring the attrition. “Not to mention the guys who we’d gauged out so much
that corks wouldn’t fit in the holes. So me and a buddy one day went up to a
few of the soldiers who had been hunting rabbits, and we asked for the bones.
We found that a rabbit femur fit pretty well in those cases.
“You could always
tell when a guy had had the procedure, because his pants would stick up and out
in front. I don’t remember who started sayin’ it first, but all at once,
everybody around camp was sayin’ ‘Hey, so-and-so’s got a boner!’ And that’s
where the term originated.”
“That’s
gross!” A female medical student shouted, and stormed off. Two or three
followed.
“That’s
a shame,” Denver said, “when a medical student can’t face the gruesome truth
about health care.”
“Anyway,
putting the bone in was a relatively painless procedure, because the urethra
had been made large enough through over-gauging. Taking the bone out, on the other hand, was awful. The
urethra would slowly close up around the bone, snugging the hole up to close
off the leak, and that was the point, but we then had to surgically remove the
bone. We’re talking excruciating pain
here. The men would, at some points, actually pass out from the pain. The faces
we saw them make, they were so awful that we would close our eyes against them.
We called that “gettin’ some shut-eye,” which is where the term originated,” he
finished.
“But
sir,” another plucky med student had decided to take a shot at the make-sense
game. “Didn’t the patients receive morphine?”
“Well,
no, the doctors had morphine, which
meant the patients got less phine,” Denver said. “There wasn’t enough phine in
between, you know what I mean?”
“There
was no midphine?” another student, asked, jokingly.
“Nope, you got
mor- or less-, which is where the term originated,” Denver answered, dead pan,
“and I’ll thank you to get serious and quit making shit up,” he added.
“In the aftermath
of a battle, the medic and his staff would go through the battle field,
assessing the casualties, in much the same way you kids do it now, with a tag,”
Denver said. “But our tag system was a lot less complicated than yours. It was
simple: if the soldier was going to live, he was passed by. If the soldier was
expected to die, the doc placed a red tag on him. Yeah, the most dreaded words
on a battle field weren’t ‘fire at will,’ or ‘retreat,’ but rather, ‘tag;
you’re it.’ Then the soldier’s valuables, uniforms and personal items would be
gathered up and sold, as a fundraiser for the Army. After every battle, soldiers could look
forward to a ‘red-tag sale,’ which was where the term originated.”
An ensign yawned
loudly in the front row. Denver looked slightly annoyed, but the moment passed.
“What’s the
matter, son? You don’t seem horribly impressed.”
“I just don’t see
why we have to follow the Army and Chair Force around on this glorified nature
walk. The Navy wasn’t concerned with this crap back then.”
“Are you kidding?” Denver leaned in on his chair,
flirting with the very edge of balance. Several students held their breath,
certain Denver would fall and need his own special brand of battlefield medicine
performed on him. Probably one student mentally ventured, it would be similar
to the battlefield medicine practiced at racetracks on leg-broke horses.
“The Navy
pioneered some of the most successful battle medicine known at the time,”
Denver finished, and settled back to the ground to some relieved (and some
resigned) sighs.
“The Navy’s always
had to be different, had to have a confusing ranking system completely
different from any of the other services, and their strange thought patterns
have been both burden and boon at once. For instance, take those gay uniforms
with the mini-capes, like the Sailors are superheroes, off to save any
self-respecting person from having sex with them. At the same time, those
strange brainwaves came up with the idea for the first cranial replacement.”
The ensign was
interested. He was inching closer.
“That’s right.
Happened when the first iron-clad ships were battling each other. The-”
“Sir, the battle
you’re referring to had no casualties. It ended in stalemate,” Denver was cut
off by an older ensign a row back. His chest bore two insignia, one each above
and below his service tape which identified him as a former enlisted corpsman
of the sand-pounding variety.
“I was just getting to that,” Denver growled.
“If you know-it-alls could can it for more than a minute at a time, I’d be done
already. But no, you guys who have all the answers just have to have your
knowledge appraised by your peers, right? Were you there, mister Cross, on the
day those vessels clashed? Were you in attendance miss Thorngrad, when the
Union and Confederate armies battled at Bull Run? Were any of you here at Antietam? No? Then listen to someone who was!
“As I was saying
before I was again so rudely interrupted,” Denver paused to glower at Cross.
“There were no deaths in either ship that day, thanks greatly to the
improvisation of the ship’s cook. One Union messhand was, in his boredom,
resting against one of the port bulkheads at the wrong time, as a Confederate
cannonball struck the hull at the exact spot he was resting his head. It
shattered the top of his skull, it looked like a rotted pumpkin.
“So what to do? If
the cooks didn’t act quick, this Sailor’s brains would soon leak all over the
deck, and it was already hard enough to keep the dishroom clean. Then one of
the dishwashers had an idea; he picked up one of the larger serving bowls in
the dishrack and covered the hurt Sailor’s head with it, and secured it with
napkins tied together. When the doc arrived on scene, he was so impressed with
the cooks’ quick-thinking, he put them up for medals, and it wasn’t long before
the crew was calling the place the ‘scullery.’”
The ensign who had
been listening with rapt attention uttered a loud choke. He’d been had. He
stormed off in disappointment with several of his friends in tow.
“What?” Denver
called after them. “That was nothing! You should hear the story behind the term
‘scuttlebutt!’”
Denver now
addressed a crowd of no more than 12 Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen. The strange
sea of faces and pixilated greens, grays and blues had become no more than a
puddle, which Denver noted with grim disappointment. There had to be one in the
crowd whom he was getting through to! He scanned their young faces for any sign
of interest, and found nothing but dubious expressions and vacant, bored gazes.
But wait! There, a young Air Force second lieutenant stood straight, his face
lit with rapt attention! Denver continued with renewed vigor.
“We have digressed
a fair amount, I think,” Denver said mopping his brow with his sleeve. “I told
you there was a damn good reason for urologists in the civil war, and I’m sure
you thought that was bullshit.”
There was a murmur
of agreement in the crowd.
“Shut up! I guess then you’ve never heard
of colonel Alain “Shoot ‘em in the Dick” Paulson, nicknamed for his famous
methods of destroying enemy morale.”
“Oh fuck this,”
the company commander said, finally giving up. “Anybody who wants to stay and
listen to this bullshit can, but everyone else let’s get back to the visitor
center and wait for the bus.”
Seven fell out
with the company commander and trudged off toward the visitor center. Denver
was losing them fast, and was talking quicker and quicker.
“They were trained
to fire a variant of the standard rifle, with a compact barrel made to fire a
very small projectile. It was, essentially, the first bb gun. Col. Paulson knew
the best way to destroy an army was to take away its drive to fight, and nothing takes the fight out of a man
like getting shot in the dick. These men did it with precision, and they were
known throughout the South as ‘Paulson’s Pee-Shooters.’ Eventually the morality
and decency squad (a.k.a. the churchgoing public) got a hold of the term and
cleaned it up, made it a reference to the caliber of the ammunition being about
the size of a pea. But you all know now where the term finds its humble
origins.
“Eventually the
Union trained up its own special squad of snipers, whose expertise was coming
around behind the enemy and gettin’ them in the backside. Our own major Richard
Carlson led the unit known as “Carlson’s Crack Shots,” and they rallied to his
cry of “hit ‘em where the good lord split ‘em, men!”
An ensign and two
lieutenants burst out laughing, and began to walk away towards the visitor
center.
“That was a damn
good show, mister Denver!” one of ‘em called back.
“Fuck off!” Denver called back. “You all
wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass! You’ll never be decent
doctors!” He was frothing a little, to the slight concern of the last
lieutenant standing, the one Denver had noticed earlier.
“I… I believe you,
mister Denver.”
“As you should,
kid, as you should. You know what? Since you’ve kept the faith, I’m going to
tell you where it all began.”
“Where what
began?”
“Medicine, kid.”
The lieutenant’s
eyes grew wide.
“We didn’t always
call it medicine, you know,” Denver launched into his final story. “It was
known by many names: fixin’ up; succor; boo-boo kissin’ just to name a few, but
it wasn’t until the civil war, in a shack not far from here, that the term
‘medicine’ was born.
“There was a
couple of Union soldiers who’d been cut off from their unit in a horribly
bloody battle. They were on the run from a band of Confederates, who were hot
on their trail, and they were just about ready to lose their shit. The dirt
trail they were following ran around a forest, and after a bend, a small shack
came into sight. Salvation! If they could get the people inside to hide them,
their bacon was saved.”
"The house
belonged to the Bensons, who were just sitting down to lunch when there was a
loud hammering at the door, followed by muffled voices. Outside, the two
soldiers were shouting at the top of their lungs, ‘let us in! Let us in!’
“What are they
sayin’ pa?” little Jimmy Benson asked his father.
“I don’t rightly
know,” Benson the elder answered. “Sounds something like… medicine.”
“What the hell is
medicine?” missus Benson asked.
“Damned if I
know,” Benson replied.
At this moment,
the two soldiers attempted a running slam at the door, and knocked themselves
out cold. The Bensons opened the door (which had been double bolted shut) and
found two beat up Union soldiers passed out on their doorstep.
“I guess they were
looking for a boo-boo kissin’.” Benson said.
“From that point
on, the practice of fixin’ someone up was known as ‘medicine,’ and that my
friend, is where the term originated.”
*$“Wow…” The
lieutenant breathed out. “That’s one hell of a story, Mr. Denver.”
“Ayuh, and all of
it true,” Denver said warmly through a ladle-shaped smile. He shifted his
stomach on his knees and wiped his be-gutsweated hands on the sides of his
pants. “But, I’m afraid that’s all I have for you today, son. The tour’s over, it’s
time you toddled off. Thanks for listening.”
The lieutenant
seemed to notice for the first time how late it had become, and he thanked Bob
Denver for his time and wisdom. He executed a left-face, and marched alone back
to the visitor’s center. Denver watched him go. The lad would be kicked out of
the Air Force two months, three days and several hours from that moment as the
result of a drug test, which revealed the man to be an insatiable pot head.
Denver checked his
watch, then drank again from the bottle in the paper bag. A few minutes later,
he caught the sound of giggling on the wind, and the sound built until a large,
red-faced man and a giggling, suggestively-dressed woman stepped out of the
woods and stopped, sagging on each other, in front of Denver. The man wore a
uniform similar to Denver’s, albeit grass-stained and rumpled.
“Shit, it took you
long enough Larry,” Denver said in a slightly irritated tone, and managed to
look both appetizingly and disapprovingly at Larry’s lady friend. “I trust you
didn’t pay for the whole night in advance…”
The woman sniffed
and turned up her nose at Denver, and Larry sheepishly said, “She’s not a
whore, she’s my date. And it was only half an hour, Bob. How were the students?
Did they learn anything?”
Denver heaved his
upper body forward over his legs, and let the momentum of his gut carry him to
his feet.
“I always teach ‘em
something,” Denver said, toddling
toward a rascal parked discretely behind some bushes. Across the back of his
civil war uniform, “Antietam National Battlefield: Janitorial Service” was
embossed in yellow script.
“I always teach ‘em
something.”
THE END.
*ALTERNATE ENDING
*
“Yeah, yeah,
‘wow,’” said a voice behind the lieutenant, and he whirled to see two police
officers emerging from a cruiser. “Alright Dylan, game’s up. C’mon back with
us, the head nurse is worried sick,” the officer finished.
“Dylan’s” eyes were
darting back and forth between the two officers, and his tongue was licking the
corners of his mouth nervously.
“Good morning,
officers! What can I do you for?”
“Cut the shit,
Dylan, you’re coming back to the hospital. This isn’t going to turn into a discussion,
and don’t play dumb.”
“Officers, is
there some sort of problem here?” The lieutenant spoke up.
“Yeah there is,
son. This man is an escaped mental patient, and we’re here to take him back.
Don’t worry, he’s not dangerous, just a little nutty.”
“I don’t
understand… he’s not an actor?”
“Heh heh, no.
Well, only on Tuesdays. He’s pretty convincing, huh? You should roll by the
hospital tomorrow,” the lead officer said, cuffing Dylan’s hands behind his
back and leading him away. “He’ll be the first American female astronaut.”
“Oh, that’s a good
one, with the voice!” his partner added.
The lieutenant was
dismayed.
The two officers
put him into the back of the car, and assumed their positions in the cab. The
driver rolled down the window.
“Don’t worry about
it, son. He’s convincing, we know. This happens every time they get a new guard
on staff, he manages to make something up and get by them every time.”
From behind him
Dylan said in a falsetto, “Canaveral, and step on it boys. I’m going to be late
for launch!”
“Shit. Looks like
the show is starting early,” the driver’s partner said. “Well… you heard the
lady.”
The police car pulled
out into traffic and began its journey back toward the hospital, presumably.
From the back, the lieutenant heard a faint lady’s voice: “To the mooooooooooooooooooon…”
The lieutenant
stood watching the road for a long time. Finally, he began to trudge back
toward the visitor center.
$ALTERNATE
ALTERNATE ENDING$
All of the shit he
said was true, and he was a time-travelling land whale who shoved metal pipes
up people’s pee-pees like a fat, malignant Dr. Who.
No comments:
Post a Comment