The Doctors Dilemma | Page 7

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 sister-in-law, Lady Gorran, and found she had the biggest
sac I ever saw: it held about two ounces. Well, Mrs. Foljambe had the
right spirit--the genuine hygienic instinct. She couldnt stand her
sister-in-law being a clean, sound woman, and she simply a whited
sepulchre. So she insisted on my operating on her, too. And by George,
sir, she hadnt any sac at all. Not a trace! Not a rudiment!! I was so
taken aback--so interested, that I forgot to take the sponges out, and
was stitching them up inside her when the nurse missed them.
Somehow, I'd made sure she'd have an exceptionally large one. [He sits
down on the couch, squaring his shoulders and shooting his hands out
of his cuffs as he sets his knuckles akimbo].
EMMY [looking in] Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington.
A long and expectant pause follows this announcement. All look to the
door; but there is no Sir Ralph.
RIDGEON [at last] Were is he?
EMMY [looking back] Drat him, I thought he was following me. He's
stayed down to talk to that lady.
RIDGEON [exploding] I told you to tell that lady-- [Emmy vanishes].
WALPOLE [jumping up again] Oh, by the way, Ridgeon, that reminds
me. Ive been talking to that poor girl. It's her husband; and she thinks
it's a case of consumption: the usual wrong diagnosis: these damned

general practitioners ought never to be allowed to touch a patient
except under the orders of a consultant. She's been describing his
symptoms to me; and the case is as plain as a pikestaff: bad
blood-poisoning. Now she's poor. She cant afford to have him operated
on. Well, you send him to me: I'll do it for nothing. Theres room for
him in my nursing home. I'll put him straight, and feed him up and
make him happy. I like making people happy. [He goes to the chair
near the window].
EMMY [looking in] Here he is.
Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington wafts himself into the room. He is a
tall man, with a head like a tall and slender egg. He has been in his time
a slender man; but now, in his sixth decade, his waistcoat has filled out
somewhat. His fair eyebrows arch good- naturedly and uncritically. He
has a most musical voice; his speech is a perpetual anthem; and he
never tires of the sound of it. He radiates an enormous self-satisfaction,
cheering, reassuring, healing by the mere incompatibility of disease or
anxiety with his welcome presence. Even broken bones, it is said, have
been known to unite at the sound of his voice: he is a born healer, as
independent of mere treatment and skill as any Christian scientist.
When he expands into oratory or scientific exposition, he is as
energetic as Walpole; but it is with a bland, voluminous, atmospheric
energy, which envelops its subject and its audience, and makes
interruption or inattention impossible, and imposes veneration and
credulity on all but the strongest minds. He is known in the medical
world as B. B.; and the envy roused by his success in practice is
softened by the conviction that he is, scientifically considered, a
colossal humbug: the fact being that, though he knows just as much
(and just as little) as his contemporaries, the qualifications that pass
muster in common men reveal their weakness when hung on his
egregious personality.
B. B. Aha! Sir Colenso. Sir Colenso, eh? Welcome to the order of
knighthood.
RIDGEON [shaking hands] Thank you, B. B.
B. B. What! Sir Patrick! And