The Doctor’s Dilemma

and I don’t pretend to be able to cure your complaint. Your life is in the hands of these gentlemen. Ridgeon Not in mine. My hands are full. I have no time and no means available for this case. Sir Patrick What do you say, Mr. Walpole? Walpole Oh, I’ll take him in hand: I don’t mind. I feel perfectly convinced that this is not a moral case at all: it’s a physical one. There’s something abnormal about his brain. That means, probably, some morbid condition affecting the spinal cord. And that means the circulation. In short, it’s clear to me that he’s suffering from an obscure form of blood-poisoning, which is almost certainly due to an accumulation of ptomaines in the nuciform sac. I’ll remove the sac⁠— Louis Changing color. Do you mean, operate on me? Ugh! No, thank you. Walpole Never fear: you won’t feel anything. You’ll be under an anaesthetic, of course. And it will be extraordinarily interesting. Louis Oh, well, if it would interest you, and if it won’t hurt, that’s another matter. How much will you give me to let you do it? Walpole Rising indignantly. How much! What do you mean? Louis Well, you don’t expect me to let you cut me up for nothing, do you? Walpole Will you paint my portrait for nothing? Louis No; but I’ll give you the portrait when it’s painted; and you can sell it afterwards for perhaps double the money. But I can’t sell my nuciform sac when you’ve cut it out. Walpole Ridgeon: did you ever hear anything like this! To Louis. Well, you can keep your nuciform sac, and your tubercular lung, and your diseased brain: I’ve done with you. One would think I was not conferring a favor on the fellow! He returns to his stool in high dudgeon. Sir Patrick That leaves only one medical man who has not withdrawn from your case, Mr. Dubedat. You have nobody left to appeal to now but Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington. Walpole If I were you, B.B., I shouldn’t touch him with a pair of tongs. Let him take his lungs to the Brompton Hospital. They won’t cure him; but they’ll teach him manners. B.B. My weakness is that I have never been able to say No, even to the most thoroughly undeserving people. Besides, I am bound to say that I don’t think it is possible in medical practice to go into the question of the value of the lives we save. Just consider, Ridgeon. Let me put it to you, Paddy. Clear your mind of cant, Walpole. Walpole Indignantly. My mind is clear of cant. B.B. Quite so. Well now, look at my practice. It is what I suppose you would call a fashionable practice, a smart practice, a practice among the best people. You ask me to go into the question of whether my patients are of any use either to themselves or anyone else. Well, if you apply any scientific test known to me, you will achieve a reductio ad absurdum. You will be driven to the conclusion that the majority of them would be, as my friend Mr. J. M. Barrie has tersely phrased it, better dead. Better dead. There are exceptions, no doubt. For instance, there is the court, an essentially social-democratic institution, supported out of public funds by the public because the public wants it and likes it. My court patients are hardworking people who give satisfaction, undoubtedly. Then I have a duke or two whose estates are probably better managed than they would be in public hands. But as to most of the rest, if I once began to argue about them, unquestionably the verdict would be, Better dead. When they actually do die, I sometimes have to offer that consolation, thinly disguised, to the family. Lulled by the cadences of his own voice, he becomes drowsier and drowsier. The fact that they spend money so extravagantly on medical attendance really would not justify me in wasting my talents⁠—such as they are⁠—in keeping them alive. After all, if my fees are high, I have to spend heavily. My own tastes are simple: a camp bed, a couple of rooms, a crust, a bottle of wine; and I am happy and contented. My wife’s tastes are perhaps more luxurious; but even she deplores an expenditure the sole object of which is to maintain the state my patients require from their medical attendant. The⁠—er⁠—er⁠—er⁠—suddenly waking up I have lost the thread of these remarks. What was I talking about, Ridgeon? Ridgeon About Dubedat. B.B. Ah yes. Precisely. Thank you. Dubedat, of course. Well, what is our friend Dubedat? A vicious and ignorant young man with a talent for drawing. Louis Thank you. Don’t mind me. B.B. But then, what are many of my patients? Vicious and ignorant young men without a talent for anything. If I were to stop to argue about their merits I should have to give up three-quarters of my practice. Therefore I have made it a rule not so to argue. Now, as an honorable man, having made that rule as to paying patients, can I make an exception as to a patient who, far from being a paying patient, may more fitly be described as a borrowing patient? No. I say No. Mr. Dubedat: your moral character is nothing to me. I look at you from a purely scientific point of view. To me you are simply a field of battle in which an invading army of tubercle bacilli struggles with a patriotic force of phagocytes. Having made a promise to your wife, which my principles will not allow me to break, to stimulate those phagocytes, I will stimulate them. And I take no further responsibility. He digs himself back in his seat exhausted. Sir Patrick Well, Mr. Dubedat, as Sir Ralph has very kindly offered to take charge of your case, and as the two minutes I promised you are up, I must ask you to excuse me. He