The Doctors Dilemma | Page 6

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 sec 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