Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln by Gluckel

Author:Gluckel [Lowenthal, Marvin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-307-80638-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

BOOK FIVE

1

I BEGIN this fifth book, dear children, with a heavy heart, for I mean to tell, from beginning to end, of the sickness and death of your beloved father.

The evening of the 19th of Tebet, 5449 [January 11, 1689], your father went into town to arrange certain business with a merchant. When he was close to the merchant’s house, he stumbled and fell over a sharp stone, and hurt himself so badly we were all alarmed.

He came home in great agony. I chanced to be visiting my mother, and I was called back at once. I found my husband groaning by the fire, and badly frightened, I asked him what had happened. He told me he had fallen, and feared there was much for me to do. He was unable to stir, and I had to empty his pockets myself. For when he set forth he had laden them with jewellery.

We did not at once, God help us! know the real nature of his injury. He had long suffered from a rupture, and in stumbling he had fallen on the ruptured spot and badly twisted his bowels.

A bed stood always ready in the lower room, but he did not wish to use it, and we had to bring him upstairs to the bed-chamber. It was a bitter cold night, as though the skies would freeze together, and we remained by his side through the cold hours, doing our best for him. But we could stand it no longer, it did him no good either to lie there in the cold, and at last he saw the harm of it, and we brought him downstairs once more.

We worried along in this way until past midnight, and still he grew no better. I saw my sorrowful fate staring me in the face, and I begged him, in Heaven’s name, to let us call a doctor and attendants. Whereat he said, «I would rather die than let the world know of it.» I stood before him and wept and screamed, «What talk is this?» I said, «Why shouldn’t people know? It has come through no shame or sin.»

But my talk proved all of no avail. He clung to the foolish fancy that it might do his children harm; people would say that the weakness was in the blood. For he never had thought of else than his children. And so we had to contend with him the livelong night, and applying every manner of poultice.

When day broke, I said to him, «Praise God the night is over, now I will send for a doctor and a rupture-cutter.» But he would not listen to it, and bade me send for the Sephardi Abraham Lopez, a physician and chirurgeon-barber. I had him fetched at once.

When he came and saw the injury, he said, «Have no fear. I will lay on something that will heal him forthwith. I have dealt with hundreds like him, and it has never failed me.»

This was early Wednesday morning. Dr. Lopez applied his remedy, thinking it would shortly heal him.

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