The Doctor’s Dilemma · Act I (2/2) (1/4)
Emmy Entering and immediately beginning to dust the couch. There’s a lady bothering me to see the doctor.
Redpenny Distracted by the interruption. Well, she can’t see the doctor. Look here: what’s the use of telling you that the doctor can’t take any new patients, when the moment a knock comes to the door, in you bounce to ask whether he can see somebody?
Emmy Who asked you whether he could see somebody?
Redpenny You did.
Emmy I said there’s a lady bothering me to see the doctor. That isn’t asking. It’s telling.
Redpenny Well, is the lady bothering you any reason for you to come bothering me when I’m busy?
Emmy Have you seen the papers?
Redpenny No.
Emmy Not seen the birthday honors?
Redpenny Beginning to swear. What the⁠—
Emmy Now, now, ducky!
Redpenny What do you suppose I care about the birthday honors? Get out of this with your chattering. Dr. Ridgeon will be down before I have these letters ready. Get out.
Emmy Dr. Ridgeon won’t never be down any more, young man.
She detects dust on the console and is down on it immediately.
Redpenny Jumping up and following her. What?
Emmy He’s been made a knight. Mind you don’t go Dr. Ridgeoning him in them letters. Sir Colenso Ridgeon is to be his name now.
Redpenny I’m jolly glad.
Emmy I never was so taken aback. I always thought his great discoveries was fudge (let alone the mess of them) with his drops of blood and tubes full of Maltese fever and the like. Now he’ll have a rare laugh at me.
Redpenny Serve you right! It was like your cheek to talk to him about science. He returns to his table and resumes his writing.
Emmy Oh, I don’t think much of science; and neither will you when you’ve lived as long with it as I have. What’s on my mind is answering the door. Old Sir Patrick Cullen has been here already and left first congratulations⁠—hadn’t time to come up on his way to the hospital, but was determined to be first⁠—coming back, he said. All the rest will be here too: the knocker will be going all day. What I’m afraid of is that the doctor’ll want a footman like all the rest, now that he’s Sir Colenso. Mind: don’t you go putting him up to it, ducky; for he’ll never have any comfort with anybody but me to answer the door. I know who to let in and who to keep out. And that reminds me of the poor lady. I think he ought to see her. She’s just the kind that puts him in a good temper. She dusts Redpenny’s papers.
Redpenny I tell you he can’t see anybody. Do go away, Emmy. How can I work with you dusting all over me like this?
Emmy I’m not hindering you working⁠—if you call writing letters working. There goes the bell. She looks out of the window. A doctor’s carriage. That’s more congratulations. She is going out when Sir Colenso Ridgeon enters. Have you finished your two eggs, sonny?
Ridgeon Yes.
Emmy Have you put on your clean vest?
Ridgeon Yes.
Emmy That’s my ducky diamond! Now keep yourself tidy and don’t go messing about and dirtying your hands: the people are coming to congratulate you. She goes out.
Sir Colenso Ridgeon* is a man of fifty who has never shaken off his youth. He has the offhanded manner and the little audacities of address which a shy and sensitive man acquires in breaking himself in to intercourse with all sorts and conditions of men. His face is a good deal lined; his movements are slower than, for instance, Redpenny’s; and his flaxen hair has lost its lustre; but in figure and manner he is more the young man than the titled physician. Even the lines in his face are those of overwork and restless scepticism, perhaps partly of curiosity and appetite, rather than of age. Just at present the announcement of his knighthood in the morning papers makes him specially self-conscious, and consequently specially offhand with Redpenny*.
Ridgeon Have you seen the papers? You’ll have to alter the name in the letters if you haven’t.
Redpenny Emmy has just told me. I’m awfully glad. I⁠—
Ridgeon Enough, young man, enough. You will soon get accustomed to it.
Redpenny They ought to have done it years ago.
Ridgeon They would have; only they couldn’t stand Emmy opening the door, I daresay.
Emmy At the door, announcing. Dr. Shoemaker. She withdraws.
A middle-aged gentleman, well dressed, comes in with a friendly but propitiatory air, not quite sure of his reception. His combination of soft manners and responsive kindliness, with a certain unseizable reserve and a familiar yet foreign chiselling of feature, reveal the Jew: in this instance the handsome gentlemanly Jew, gone a little pigeon-breasted and stale after thirty, as handsome young Jews often do, but still decidedly good-looking.
The Gentleman Do you remember me? Schutzmacher. University College school and Belsize Avenue. Loony Schutzmacher, you know.
Ridgeon What! Loony! He shakes hands cordially. Why, man, I thought you were dead long ago. Sit down. Schutzmacher* sits on the couch: Ridgeon* on the chair between it and the window. Where have you been these thirty years?
Schutzmacher In general practice, until a few months ago. I’ve retired.
Ridgeon Well done, Loony! I wish I could afford to retire. Was your practice in London?
Schutzmacher No.
Ridgeon Fashionable coast practice, I suppose.
Schutzmacher How could I afford to buy a fashionable practice? I hadn’t a rap. I set up in a manufacturing town in the midlands in a little surgery at ten shillings a week.
Ridgeon And made your fortune?
Schutzmacher Well, I’m pretty comfortable. I have a place in Hertfordshire besides our flat in town. If you ever want a quiet Saturday to Monday, I’ll take you down in my motor at an hours notice.
Ridgeon Just rolling in money! I wish you rich G.P.’s would teach me how to make some. What’s the secret of it?
Schutzmacher Oh, in my case the secret was simple enough, though I suppose I should have got into trouble if it had attracted any notice. And I’m afraid you’ll think it rather infra dig.
Ridgeon Oh, I have an open mind. What was the secret?
Schutzmacher Well, the secret was just two words.
Ridgeon Not Consultation Free, was it?
Schutzmacher Shocked. No, no. Really!
Ridgeon Apologetic. Of course not. I was only joking.
Schutzmacher My two words were simply Cure Guaranteed.
Ridgeon Admiring. Cure Guaranteed!
Schutzmacher Guaranteed. After all, that’s what everybody wants from a doctor, isn’t it?
Ridgeon My dear loony, it was an inspiration. Was it on the brass plate?
Schutzmacher There was no brass plate. It was a shop window: red, you know, with black lettering. Doctor Leo Schutzmacher, L.R.C.P.M.R.C.S. Advice and medicine sixpence. Cure Guaranteed.
Ridgeon And the guarantee proved sound nine times out of ten, eh?
Schutzmacher Rather hurt at so moderate an estimate. Oh, much oftener than that. You see, most people get well all right if they are careful and you give them a little sensible advice. And the medicine really did them good. Parrish’s Chemical Food: phosphates, you know. One tablespoonful to a twelve-ounce bottle of water: nothing better, no matter what the case is.
Ridgeon Redpenny: make a note of Parrish’s Chemical Food.
Schutzmacher I take it myself, you know, when I feel run down. Goodbye. You don’t mind my calling, do you? Just to congratulate you.
Ridgeon Delighted, my dear Loony. Come to lunch on Saturday next week. Bring your motor and take me down to Hertford.
Schutzmacher I will. We shall be delighted. Thank you. Goodbye. He goes out with Ridgeon, who returns immediately.
Redpenny Old Paddy Cullen was here before you were up, to be the first to congratulate you.
Ridgeon Indeed. Who taught you to speak of Sir Patrick Cullen as old Paddy Cullen, you young ruffian?
Redpenny You never call him anything else.
Ridgeon Not now that I am Sir Colenso. Next thing, you fellows will be calling me old Colly Ridgeon.
Redpenny We do, at St. Anne’s.
Ridgeon Yach! That’s what makes the medical student the most disgusting figure in modern civilization. No veneration, no manners⁠—no⁠—
Emmy At the door, announcing. Sir Patrick Cullen. She retires.
Sir Patrick Cullen* is more than twenty years older than Ridgeon, not yet quite at the end of his tether, but near it and resigned to it. His name, his plain, downright, sometimes rather arid common sense, his large build and stature, the absence of those odd moments of ceremonial servility by which an old English doctor sometimes shows you what the status of the profession was in England in his youth, and an occasional turn of speech, are Irish; but he has lived all his life in England and is thoroughly acclimatized. His manner to Ridgeon, whom he likes, is whimsical and fatherly: to others he is a little gruff and uninviting, apt to substitute more or less expressive grunts for articulate speech, and generally indisposed, at his age, to make much social effort. He shakes Ridgeon’s* hand and beams at him cordially and jocularly.
Sir Patrick Well, young chap. Is your hat too small for you, eh?
Ridgeon Much too small. I owe it all to you.
Sir Patrick Blarney, my boy. Thank you all the same. He sits in one of the armchairs near the fireplace. Ridgeon sits on the couch. I’ve come to talk to you a bit. To Redpenny. Young man: get out.
Redpenny Certainly, Sir Patrick He collects his papers and makes for the door.
Sir Patrick Thank you. That’s a good lad. Redpenny vanishes. They all put up with me, these young chaps, because I’m an old man, a real old man, not like you. You’re only beginning to give yourself the airs of age. Did you ever see a boy cultivating a moustache? Well, a middle-aged doctor cultivating a grey head is much the same sort of spectacle.
Ridgeon Good Lord! yes: I suppose so. And I thought that the days of my vanity were past. Tell me: at what age does a man leave off being a fool?
Sir Patrick Remember the Frenchman who asked his grandmother at what 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, there’s nothing like progress, is there?
Sir Patrick Don’t 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. That’s 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. You’ve 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! You’ve 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, I’ve 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 won’t 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 don’t believe a bit in my discovery.
Sir Patrick No, no: I don’t go quite so far as that, Colly. But still, you remember Jane Marsh?
Ridgeon Jane Marsh? No.
Sir Patrick You don’t!
Ridgeon No.
Sir Patrick You mean to tell me you don’t 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 you’ve 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 showing it at medical lectures.
Sir Patrick Still, that wasn’t 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. I’ve tried these modern inoculations a bit myself. I’ve killed people with them; and I’ve 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 you’ll find out why.
Sir Patrick Grumbling and fumbling for his spectacles. Oh, bother your pamphlets. What’s 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 That’s not new. I’ve heard this notion that the white corpuscles⁠—what is it that what’s 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 don’t 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 won’t 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 upgrade, we should have cured her arm. But we got in on the downgrade and lost her arm for her. I call the upgrade the positive phase and the downgrade 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?