Irving Wallace - The Prize

Garrett’s attention had strayed, again, to the framed photographs on the walls. ‘Those pictures, Dr. Öhman, are they all medical winners?’

Öhman surveyed the photographs with pride. ‘My little hobby,’ he said. ‘I was a mere lad-long ago-in the thirties-when my father invited me to attend with him a Nobel ceremony. My father was a journalist and had a press invitation, and then a colleague became ill and there was an extra invitation at the last moment and my father took me. It was a memorable occasion for a young boy. I watched Sir Charles Scott Sherrington receive the diploma for medicine, and my father told me all about Sherrington-how he had been nominated regularly for thirty years, and, for one reason or another, the investigators always recommended against him-and now, in his old age, they had relented. I was moved. That night, my destiny was set. I, too, would become a physician. Sherrington’s was the first photograph I hung on this wall, so long after. It’s there, behind my desk.’

Öhman leaped to his feet, and went around his desk, squinting at his photographs. ‘Eventually, I acquired photographs of all the winners, and the autographs of at least half of them. An inspiring hobby.’ He pointed to a fuzzy photograph. ‘Uhhh-the celebrated Dr. Paul Ehrlich, In the first eight years, he was nominated seventy times by professors in thirteen different nations. His work in immunology was recognized, at last, in 1908. There is a story-the Kaiser of Germany was like a peacock over Ehrlich’s conquest of the spirochete causing syphilis, and at a public banquet told him-ordered him-as if it were the easiest thing, “Now Ehrlich, get on with it, get rid of cancer”.’

Rapidly, Öhman bounced from picture to picture, tapping some and adding vocal captions. ‘Here-uhhh-Sir Alexander Fleming. University of London. He was looking into influenza when a blue-green mould spoiled on one of his culture plates. It was the shape of a pencil. He named it penicillin. That was 1928, yet he received no Nobel Prize for it until 1945, seventeen years later, because initially, he had no practical use for the discovery. Then, Sir Howard Florey and Dr. Ernst Boris Chain, of Oxford, began to wonder if it had a use. They injected mice with fatal doses of streptococci, and half of the mice with this penicillin, and the half with penicillin lived and the others died, and they had found a use, at last, for Dr. Fleming’s accidental find. They all got the prize.’

He had reached a larger frame bearing two portraits. ‘Uhhh, the first joint prize-this will interest you especially, Dr. Garrett. For five years the Swedish Academy resisted splitting a single prize. Finally, in 1906, they broke down and divided an award between Camillo Golgi, of Italy, and Ramón y Cajal, of Spain. Since then, the prize has been divided many times, as witness-Dr. Farelli and you.’

The blood seethed to Garrett’s cheeks, and he wanted to speak against the outrage of Farelli, but some restraint kept him from bringing up the matter before Ingrid Påhl. Instead, he said, ‘Do you think those joint prizes are fair?’

‘So many candidates are often in the same field, it is impossible to credit only one.’ Öhman had arrived at an elderly face on the wall. ‘My favourite since 1949. Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz, of Lisbon, Portugal.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Ingrid Påhl.

‘In 1936, he introduced the prefrontal lobotomy,’ said Öhman. ‘There was no cure for certain cases of severe mental distress, apprehension, depression. Drugs would not help. Psychiatric treatment would not help. Dr. Moniz found that these acute fears, verging on insanity, came from the frontal lobes of the brain, certain grey matter in the skull above the eyebrows. By incisions in the side of the head, the size of a shilling, and severing the nerve fibres of the front lobes with a long thin knife, Dr. Moniz learned that a patient’s anxiety could be dramatically reduced.’

‘It sounds horrible,’ said Ingrid Påhl.

‘It is to be preferred to suicide or insanity,’ said Öhman flatly. ‘It cuts away all apprehension and worry. It makes these patients happier. The only unfortunate aspect is that it frequently makes them into irresponsible dullards.’

‘But that’s like cutting away a man’s conscience, the soul that God gave him,’ said Ingrid Påhl.

‘In medicine, we are less concerned with a man’s soul than with his life,’ said Öhman objectively. ‘Uhhh-I am sure that Dr. Garrett will not disagree with me. The brain is the unexplored Mato Grosso of the human body. For that reason, I have always respected Dr. Moniz’s find above all others-until lately. Now, I have a new favourite.’

Öhman hurried back to his desk, opened, a drawer, and took out a photograph. He offered it to Garrett with a pen.

‘Will you sign your photograph, Dr. Garrett? It shall henceforth have the main place-above Dr. Moniz.’

Garrett accepted the picture and pen. ‘I hardly know what to say.’

‘You need say nothing. Your accomplishment speaks for you.’

Garrett signed the photograph: ‘To my favourite co-worker and friend. Dr. Erik Öhman, with best wishes, John Garrett.’ He returned the photograph and pen, and Öhman fondled the photograph with the reverence often given an early church relic.

‘Now,’ said Garrett, pointedly, ‘I’d like to talk a little shop.’

Ingrid Påhl could not miss the meaning of Garrett’s remark, and she did not. She pushed herself from her chair. ‘If it is going to be shop talk, this is no place for me. I have some friends here I want to see. When do you want me to pick you up, Dr. Garrett?’

‘Well-’

‘Not for an hour anyway,’ said Öhman. ‘Uhhh-there is much I want to show Dr. Garrett. I want to take him through my ward and discuss various problems.’

‘An hour, then,’ said Ingrid Påhl, and she waddled out of the room.

The moment that they were alone, Garrett began to adhere to his battle plan. ‘When do you perform your next transplantation?’ he asked Öhman.

‘We go into surgery at seven in the morning of the tenth. I am still making tests on the patient, and still trying to find the correct-sized young bovines or sheep, in order to acquire the best fresh hearts available. The case is an interesting one. Uhhh-I should say, in some respects, the most challenging and important one I have yet undertaken. The patient is a Count in his early seventies, a distant relative of His Royal Highness. Much public attention will be given to the result.’

Garrett’s heart leaped. This was what he had hoped for, this was the main chance.

‘Will there be any difficulties?’ Garrett inquired.

‘Uhhh-frankly, some aspects of the case worried me, but now, I am confident again-since yesterday, when Dr. Farelli was in to examine the patient.’

Garrett felt the blood siphon from his face, and he thought that he would faint. ‘Farelli?’ he gasped.

Öhman’s brow wrinkled with surprise at his guest’s emotional reaction. ‘Why, yes-Dr. Carlo Farelli. He appeared yesterday with a newspaperwoman who had been interviewing him-a Miss Wiley from America-and without protocol, he introduced himself and said that he wanted to see my ward, my patients-all most flattering-’

‘And you-you took them through-both of them?’

‘Why, certainly. And he was kind enough to study the patient’s history and charts and offer some advice. As I said, it was flattering and generous of him-’

‘You fool!’ shouted Garrett.

Öhman stood stunned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me. Generous of him? What a laugh. He’s an arrogant, vain publicity monger and a thief.’

Öhman looked as if he had been slapped. He swayed, speechless, the pupils of his eyes dilating. ‘Dr. Garrett, I-uhhh-uhhh-uhhh-are you referring to Dr. Farelli-?’