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age we get free from the temptations of love. The old woman said she

didn't know. [Ridgeon laughs]. Well, I make you the same answer. But the

world's growing very interesting to me now, Colly.

RIDGEON. You keep up your interest in science, do you?

SIR PATRICK. Lord! yes. Modern science is a wonderful thing. Look at

your great discovery! Look at all the great discoveries! Where are

they leading to? Why, right back to my poor dear old father's ideas

and discoveries. He's been dead now over forty years. Oh, it's very

interesting.

RIDGEON. Well, theres nothing like progress, is there?

SIR PATRICK. Dont misunderstand me, my boy. I'm not belittling your

discovery. Most discoveries are made regularly every fifteen years;

and it's fully a hundred and fifty since yours was made last. Thats

something to be proud of. But your discovery's not new. It's only

inoculation. My father practised inoculation until it was made criminal

in eighteen-forty. That broke the poor old man's heart, Colly: he died

of it. And now it turns out that my father was right after all. Youve

brought us back to inoculation.

RIDGEON. I know nothing about smallpox. My line is tuberculosis and

typhoid and plague. But of course the principle of all vaccines is the

same.

SIR PATRICK. Tuberculosis? M-m-m-m! Youve found out how to cure

consumption, eh?

RIDGEON. I believe so.

SIR PATRICK. Ah yes. It's very interesting. What is it the old cardinal

says in Browning's play? "I have known four and twenty leaders of

revolt." Well, Ive known over thirty men that found out how to cure

consumption. Why do people go on dying of it, Colly? Devilment, I

suppose. There was my father's old friend George Boddington of Sutton

Coldfield. He discovered the open-air cure in eighteen-forty. He was

ruined and driven out of his practice for only opening the windows; and

now we wont let a consumptive patient have as much as a roof over his

head. Oh, it's very VERY interesting to an old man.

RIDGEON. You old cynic, you dont believe a bit in my discovery.

SIR PATRICK. No, no: I dont go quite so far as that, Colly. But still,

you remember Jane Marsh?

RIDGEON. Jane Marsh? No.

SIR PATRICK. You dont!

RIDGEON. No.

SIR PATRICK. You mean to tell me you dont remember the woman with the

tuberculosis ulcer on her arm?

RIDGEON [enlightened] Oh, your washerwoman's daughter. Was her name Jane

Marsh? I forgot.

SIR PATRICK. Perhaps youve forgotten also that you undertook to cure her

with Koch's tuberculin.

RIDGEON. And instead of curing her, it rotted her arm right off. Yes:

I remember. Poor Jane! However, she makes a good living out of that arm

now by shewing it at medical lectures.

SIR PATRICK. Still, that wasnt quite what you intended, was it?

RIDGEON. I took my chance of it.

SIR PATRICK. Jane did, you mean.

RIDGEON. Well, it's always the patient who has to take the chance

when an experiment is necessary. And we can find out nothing without

experiment.

SIR PATRICK. What did you find out from Jane's case?

RIDGEON. I found out that the inoculation that ought to cure sometimes

kills.

SIR PATRICK. I could have told you that. Ive tried these modern

inoculations a bit myself. Ive killed people with them; and Ive cured

people with them; but I gave them up because I never could tell which I

was going to do.

RIDGEON [taking a pamphlet from a drawer in the writing-table and

handing it to him] Read that the next time you have an hour to spare;

and youll find out why.

SIR PATRICK [grumbling and fumbling for his spectacles] Oh, bother your

pamphlets. Whats the practice of it? [Looking at the pamphlet] Opsonin?

What the devil is opsonin?

RIDGEON. Opsonin is what you butter the disease germs with to make your

white blood corpuscles eat them. [He sits down again on the couch].

SIR PATRICK. Thats not new. Ive heard this notion that the white

corpuscles--what is it that whats his name?--Metchnikoff--calls them?

RIDGEON. Phagocytes.

SIR PATRICK. Aye, phagocytes: yes, yes, yes. Well, I heard this theory

that the phagocytes eat up the disease germs years ago: long before you

came into fashion. Besides, they dont always eat them.

RIDGEON. They do when you butter them with opsonin.

SIR PATRICK. Gammon.

RIDGEON. No: it's not gammon. What it comes to in practice is this. The

phagocytes wont eat the microbes unless the microbes are nicely buttered

for them. Well, the patient manufactures the butter for himself all

right; but my discovery is that the manufacture of that butter, which

I call opsonin, goes on in the system by ups and downs--Nature being

always rhythmical, you know--and that what the inoculation does is to

stimulate the ups or downs, as the case may be. If we had inoculated

Jane Marsh when her butter factory was on the up-grade, we should have

cured her arm. But we got in on the downgrade and lost her arm for her.

I call the up-grade the positive phase and the down-grade the negative

phase. Everything depends on your inoculating at the right moment.

Inoculate when the patient is in the negative phase and you kill:

inoculate when the patient is in the positive phase and you cure.

SIR PATRICK. And pray how are you to know whether the patient is in the

positive or the negative phase?

RIDGEON. Send a drop of the patient's blood to the laboratory at St.

Anne's; and in fifteen minutes I'll give you his opsonin index in

figures. If the figure is one, inoculate and cure: if it's under point

eight, inoculate and kill. Thats my discovery: the most important that

has been made since Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. My

tuberculosis patients dont die now.

SIR PATRICK. And mine do when my inoculation catches them in the

negative phase, as you call it. Eh?

RIDGEON. Precisely. To inject a vaccine into a patient without first

testing his opsonin is as near murder as a respectable practitioner can

get. If I wanted to kill a man I should kill him that way.

EMMY [looking in] Will you see a lady that wants her husband's lungs

cured?

RIDGEON [impatiently] No. Havnt I told you I will see nobody? [To Sir

Patrick] I live in a state of siege ever since it got about that I'm a

magician who can cure consumption with a drop of serum. [To Emmy] Dont

come to me again about people who have no appointments. I tell you I can

see nobody.

EMMY. Well, I'll tell her to wait a bit.

RIDGEON [furious] Youll tell her I cant see her, and send her away: do

you hear?

EMMY [unmoved] Well, will you see Mr Cutler Walpole? He dont want a

cure: he only wants to congratulate you.

RIDGEON. Of course. Shew him up. [She turns to go]. Stop. [To Sir

Patrick] I want two minutes more with you between ourselves. [To

Emmy] Emmy: ask Mr. Walpole to wait just two minutes, while I finish a

consultation.

EMMY. Oh, he'll wait all right. He's talking to the poor lady. [She goes

out].

SIR PATRICK. Well? what is it?

RIDGEON. Dont laugh at me. I want your advice.

SIR PATRICK. Professional advice?

RIDGEON. Yes. Theres something the matter with me. I dont know what it

is.

SIR PATRICK. Neither do I. I suppose youve been sounded.

RIDGEON. Yes, of course. Theres nothing wrong with any of the organs:

nothing special, anyhow. But I have a curious aching: I dont know where:

I cant localize it. Sometimes I think it's my heart: sometimes I suspect

my spine. It doesnt exactly hurt me; but it unsettles me completely. I

feel that something is going to happen. And there are other symptoms.

Scraps of tunes come into my head that seem to me very pretty, though

theyre quite commonplace.

SIR PATRICK. Do you hear voices?

RIDGEON. No.

SIR PATRICK. I'm glad of that. When my patients tell me that theyve made

a greater discovery than Harvey, and that they hear voices, I lock them

up.

RIDGEON. You think I'm mad! Thats just the suspicion that has come

across me once or twice. Tell me the truth: I can bear it.

SIR PATRICK. Youre sure there are no voices?

RIDGEON. Quite sure.

SIR PATRICK. Then it's only foolishness.

RIDGEON. Have you ever met anything like it before in your practice?

SIR PATRICK. Oh, yes: often. It's very common between the ages of

seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on again at forty or

thereabouts. Youre a bachelor, you see. It's not serious--if youre

careful.

RIDGEON. About my food?

SIR PATRICK. No: about your behavior. Theres nothing wrong with your

spine; and theres nothing wrong with your heart; but theres something

wrong with your common sense. Youre not going to die; but you may be

going to make a fool of yourself. So be careful.

RIDGEON. I see you dont believe in my discovery. Well, sometimes I dont

believe in it myself. Thank you all the same. Shall we have Walpole up?

SIR PATRICK. Oh, have him up. [Ridgeon rings]. He's a clever operator,

is Walpole, though he's only one of your chloroform surgeons. In my

early days, you made your man drunk; and the porters and students

held him down; and you had to set your teeth and finish the job

fast. Nowadays you work at your ease; and the pain doesn't come until

afterwards, when youve taken your cheque and rolled up your bag and left

the house. I tell you, Colly, chloroform has done a lot of mischief.

It's enabled every fool to be a surgeon.

RIDGEON [to Emmy, who answers the bell] Shew Mr Walpole up.

EMMY. He's talking to the lady.

RIDGEON [exasperated] Did I not tell you--

Emmy goes out without heeding him. He gives it up, with a shrug, and

plants himself with his back to the console, leaning resignedly against

it.

SIR PATRICK. I know your Cutler Walpoles and their like. Theyve found

out that a man's body's full of bits and scraps of old organs he has no

mortal use for. Thanks to chloroform, you can cut half a dozen of them

out without leaving him any the worse, except for the illness and the

guineas it costs him. I knew the Walpoles well fifteen years ago. The

father used to snip off the ends of people's uvulas for fifty guineas,

and paint throats with caustic every day for a year at two guineas a

time. His brother-in-law extirpated tonsils for two hundred guineas

until he took up women's cases at double the fees. Cutler himself worked

hard at anatomy to find something fresh to operate on; and at last he

got hold of something he calls the nuciform sac, which he's made quite

the fashion. People pay him five hundred guineas to cut it out. They

might as well get their hair cut for all the difference it makes; but

I suppose they feel important after it. You cant go out to dinner now

without your neighbor bragging to you of some useless operation or

other.

EMMY [announcing] Mr Cutler Walpole. [She goes out].

Cutler Walpole is an energetic, unhesitating man of forty, with a

cleanly modelled face, very decisive and symmetrical about the shortish,

salient, rather pretty nose, and the three trimly turned corners made by

his chin and jaws. In comparison with Ridgeon's delicate broken lines,

and Sir Patrick's softly rugged aged ones, his face looks machine-made

and beeswaxed; but his scrutinizing, daring eyes give it life and force.

He seems never at a loss, never in doubt: one feels that if he made

a mistake he would make it thoroughly and firmly. He has neat,

well-nourished hands, short arms, and is built for strength and

compactness rather than for height. He is smartly dressed with a fancy

waistcoat, a richly colored scarf secured by a handsome ring, ornaments

on his watch chain, spats on his shoes, and a general air of the

well-to-do sportsman about him. He goes straight across to Ridgeon and

shakes hands with him.

WALPOLE. My dear Ridgeon, best wishes! heartiest congratulations! You

deserve it.

RIDGEON. Thank you.

WALPOLE. As a man, mind you. You deserve it as a man. The opsonin is

simple rot, as any capable surgeon can tell you; but we're all delighted

to see your personal qualities officially recognized. Sir Patrick: how

are you? I sent you a paper lately about a little thing I invented: a

new saw. For shoulder blades.

SIR PATRICK [meditatively] Yes: I got it. It's a good saw: a useful,

handy instrument.

WALPOLE [confidently] I knew youd see its points.

SIR PATRICK. Yes: I remember that saw sixty-five years ago.

WALPOLE. What!

SIR PATRICK. It was called a cabinetmaker's jimmy then.

WALPOLE. Get out! Nonsense! Cabinetmaker be--

RIDGEON. Never mind him, Walpole. He's jealous.

WALPOLE. By the way, I hope I'm not disturbing you two in anything

private.

RIDGEON. No no. Sit down. I was only consulting him. I'm rather out of

sorts. Overwork, I suppose.

WALPOLE [swiftly] I know whats the matter with you. I can see it in your

complexion. I can feel it in the grip of your hand.

RIDGEON. What is it?

WALPOLE. Blood-poisoning.

RIDGEON. Blood-poisoning! Impossible.

WALPOLE. I tell you, blood-poisoning. Ninety-five per cent of the human

race suffer from chronic blood-poisoning, and die of it. It's as simple

as A.B.C. Your nuciform sac is full of decaying matter--undigested food

and waste products--rank ptomaines. Now you take my advice, Ridgeon. Let

me cut it out for you. You'll be another man afterwards.

SIR PATRICK. Dont you like him as he is?

WALPOLE. No I dont. I dont like any man who hasnt a healthy circulation.

I tell you this: in an intelligently governed country people wouldnt

be allowed to go about with nuciform sacs, making themselves centres

of infection. The operation ought to be compulsory: it's ten times more

important than vaccination.

SIR PATRICK. Have you had your own sac removed, may I ask?

WALPOLE [triumphantly] I havnt got one. Look at me! Ive no symptoms. I'm

as sound as a bell. About five per cent of the population havnt got any;

and I'm one of the five per cent. I'll give you an instance. You know

Mrs Jack Foljambe: the smart Mrs Foljambe? I operated at Easter on her