The Lord God Made Them All

In this volume of his memoirs, James Herriot, a veterinary surgeon in the Yorkshire Dales of northern England, recounts his return to civilian practice after serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II. The book interweaves episodes from the late 1940s and 1950s with accounts of two voyages transporting livestock abroad, in 1961 and 1963. Throughout, Herriot reflects on the transformation of farming, the raising of his children, and the enduring beauty of the Dales.

The narrative opens with a visit to Mr. Ripley's Anson Hall, a farm accessible only through seven dilapidated gates. In a pre-war visit, Ripley had asked Herriot to castrate what turned out to be enormous yearling bulls and had promised to repair the treacherous seventh gate. That same gate, now tangled with barbed wire, fell on Herriot again. Ripley's cow, supposedly lame from a broken leg, merely had a hobnail in her foot. Before Herriot could leave, Ripley produced another bull for castration and once again guaranteed he would mend the gate.

Herriot observes that the profession was transforming around him. Injections had replaced drenching, the old method of pouring medicine down a cow's throat. Sulfa drugs, early antimicrobials, were in wide use, and penicillin was arriving. Small farmers with only half a dozen cows were disappearing, and the eccentric characters Herriot treasured were vanishing with them. At Skeldale House, the practice headquarters in the market town of Darrowby, Herriot and his wife, Helen, occupied the whole building. His partner, Siegfried Farnon, had married and moved out, while Siegfried's younger brother, Tristan, had left to join the Ministry of Agriculture.

The book's domestic thread follows Herriot's children. His son, Jimmy, began accompanying him on rounds at age four, graduating from observer to eager assistant. Jimmy's proudest possession was a tiny pair of hob-nailed farm boots. His adventurous streak led him to climb the wistaria outside the consulting-room window; a branch snapped and the boy plummeted into the garden, landing unhurt. When Herriot threatened to replace him with "another little boy," Jimmy accepted the idea calmly until a terrible thought struck: "Would he have my boots?" Herriot's daughter, Rosie, born May 9, 1947, eventually took Jimmy's place in the car, opening gates, fetching instruments, and quizzing her father on flowers and birds. A frightening moment occurred at Mr. Binns' farm when a wild Galloway cow charged down a passage where Rosie stood; the child whispered "Mama," and the cow halted two feet away.

Among the memorable cases, Herriot recounts his first Caesarean section on a cow with the help of Norman Beaumont, a final-year veterinary student who had seen only one Caesarean, from the back of the class. Herriot accidentally incised the rumen, the cow's first stomach, instead of the uterus, flooding the abdomen with contaminated material. Against all odds, the cow, Bella, recovered without complications and went on to produce eight more calves.

Another painful episode involves Robert Maxwell, a local farmer, and his cow. After Herriot injected a new drug into the jugular vein to treat a hoof infection, a clot developed and the cow died from an embolism. Maxwell never complained. A month later, when sulphonamides failed to cure another cow's pyelonephritis, a severe kidney infection, Herriot improvised by squeezing penicillin from mastitis tubes, designed for treating udder infections, into the cow's rump. The cow recovered, and Maxwell's only complaint was the litter of empty tubes across the byre, or cowshed, floor. Herriot adopted Maxwell's gracious forbearance as a personal standard.

The story of Amber, a golden-dappled stray at the small dog sanctuary run by Sister Rose, a nursing sister who employed Herriot as her vet, is among the book's most sorrowful passages. Herriot diagnosed demodectic mange, caused by the mite Demodex canis, a condition often incurable at the time. He took the dog home and treated her every evening, but the disease spread relentlessly. When abscesses became inevitable, Herriot euthanized her. He reflects that modern drugs can now cure most cases, but in his memory Amber is always in the headlights, always in the dark.

During the great snow of 1947, Bert Kealey, isolated on a high moor, reported that his sow had farrowed 12 piglets but had no milk. Herriot attempted to reach the farm on skis but was blinded by a snow flurry and forced back. Recalling that manipulating a cow's uterus triggers a reflex milk letdown, he telephoned Bert with instructions to stimulate the sow's cervix manually. The farmer found the procedure unappealing but complied, and the litter was saved.

Interspersed with these Dales episodes are accounts of Herriot's 1961 voyage to the Russian port of Klaipeda aboard the Iris Clausen, a 300-ton Danish motor ship carrying 383 pedigree sheep. A force-nine Baltic gale put the largest rams into acute distress. Herriot injected each with cortisone and was astonished when every animal recovered within two hours. At Klaipeda, armed soldiers guarded the quayside while friendly officials boarded the ship. A Russian woman vet examined the sheep for five hours, crying "Rromnee Marrsh!" with delight. The persistent cough among the Lincoln sheep alarmed every Russian who heard it. Herriot ventured ashore and visited a school, where his tattered farm coat alarmed Russian officials before the tension was defused. The acceptance forms were signed at 2 a.m. by a young Russian who paused to ask Herriot about English words whose singular and plural forms are identical.

A second voyage, in August 1963, took Herriot to Istanbul with 40 pedigree Jersey cattle aboard the Heracles, an aging, war-surplus Globemaster troop carrier. Over the Alps, the starboard inner engine caught fire; the crew extinguished the flames and continued on three engines. On the ground, Turkish vets demanded one cow be returned to England over a number discrepancy. Joe, one of two Jersey farmers accompanying the cattle, settled the matter by pushing his face close to the head vet and drawling, "Oi ain't takin' 'er baack, mate." The cattlemen explored Istanbul at night and accidentally stumbled into a wedding reception. When the engine could not be repaired, they signed waivers and flew home on three engines. Herriot later heard that the aircraft subsequently plunged into the Mediterranean with the loss of all crew, though the report was unconfirmed.

Shorter stories capture the texture of Dales life: Humphrey Cobb, a retired bookmaker who called after midnight whenever he returned drunk from the races, convinced his beagle Myrtle was dying, until the one night Herriot refused to go out and the recently nursing Myrtle genuinely developed eclampsia, a life-threatening calcium deficiency; Walt Barnett, the richest and most feared man in Darrowby, who wept over his dead cat Fred and said, "He was my friend"; and Tristan's dazzling display of goat knowledge, crammed overnight for an exam, which stole a client's admiration from Siegfried.

The book closes on a summer morning. At Matt Clarke's farm, his aged mother, Grandma Clarke, gave Rosie a chocolate, touched her cheek, and told Herriot that the years when children are young are the best of life. Back at Skeldale House, Siegfried and Herriot lay on the lawn. Siegfried declared that the post-war years, with their flood of new drugs and the farmers' new respect for the profession, represented the high noon of country practice. When Herriot asked whether being at the top meant things must decline, Siegfried insisted they would simply be different. Brandishing a piece of grass, he delivered the book's final words: "There are great days ahead!"