The doctor at Tarragona
A brisk, handsome man of about thirty who examined George Orwell's throat wound eight or nine days after he was shot, told him one vocal cord was paralysed, and answered the question about when his voice would come back by saying cheerfully that it never would. He was wrong, as it turned out.
In Orwell's account he wants to get through the queue. He is quick, thorough and entirely unsentimental about what he finds, and delivers the worst of it in the same tone as the rest.
The book
At a glance
- The doctor who examined Orwell's throat wound at Tarragona
- About thirty
- A sniper's bullet through the throat at Huesca, May 1937
- Chapter 12
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeGeorge Orwell was shot through the throat by a sniper at Huesca in May 1937 and passed back down a chain of hospitals. At Tarragona, eight or nine days later, his wound was examined properly for the first time. The surgery was full of men having plaster breast-plates hacked off with shears, an anxious dirty face with a week's beard protruding from each neck-hole.
The doctor was brisk and handsome and about thirty. He sat Orwell down, took hold of his tongue with a piece of rough gauze, pulled it out as far as it would go, put a dentist's mirror down his throat and told him to say Eh. He kept it up until the tongue was bleeding and Orwell's eyes were streaming. Then he said that one vocal cord was paralysed.
Orwell asked when he would get his voice back. The doctor said cheerfully that he never would. The book's next sentence corrects him: for about two months Orwell could not speak much above a whisper, and then his voice returned rather suddenly, the other vocal cord having compensated. The pain in his arm was a separate matter, the bullet having gone through a bunch of nerves at the back of the neck, and it kept him awake for about a month.
How the book draws them
- Brisk and handsomeAbout thirty, working through a surgery full of newly arrived wounded, with doctors nearby cutting plaster casings off men with smashed ribs and collar-bones.
- The examinationThe tongue gripped in rough gauze and pulled out as far as it would go, a dentist's mirror down the throat, and Eh repeated until the tongue bled.
- The verdictOne vocal cord paralysed. Asked when the voice would come back, he said cheerfully that it never would.
- WrongOrwell records the correction in the next breath. Two months of whispering, then the voice came back rather suddenly because the other cord compensated.