George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

SIR PATRICK And pray how are you to know whether the patient is in the positive or the negative phase?

RIDGEON Send a drop of the patient’s blood to the laboratory at St. Anne’s; and in fifteen minutes I’ll give you his opsonin index in figures. If the figure is one, inoculate and cure: if it’s under point eight, inoculate and kill. Thats my discovery: the most important that has been made since Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. My tuberculosis patients dont die now.

SIR PATRICK And mine do when my inoculation catches them in the negative phase, as you call it. Eh?

RIDGEON Precisely. To inject a vaccine into a patient without first testing his opsonin is as near murder as a respectable practitioner can get. If I wanted to kill a man I should kill him that way.

EMMY [ looking in] Will you see a lady that wants her husband’s lungs cured?

RIDGEON [ impatiently ] No. Havnt I told you I will see nobody? [To SIR PATRICK] I live in a state of siege ever since it got about that I’m a magician who can cure consumption with a drop of serum. [To EMMY ] Dont come to me again about people who have no appointments. I tell you I can see nobody.

EMMY Well, I’ll tell her to wait a bit.

RIDGEON [ furious ] Youll tell her I cant see her, and send her away: do you hear?

EMMY [unmoved] Well, will you see Mr Cutler Walpole? He dont want a cure: he only wants to congratulate you.

RIDGEON Of course. Shew him up. [ She turns to go ] . Stop. [To SIR PATRICK] I want two minutes more with you between ourselves. [To EMMY] Emmy: ask Mr Walpole to wait just two minutes, while I finish a consultation.

EMMY Oh, he’ll wait all right. He’s talking to the poor lady. [ She goes out ] .

SIR PATRICK Well? what is it?

RIDGEON Dont laugh at me. I want your advice.

SIR PATRICK Professional advice?

RIDGEON Yes. Theres something the matter with me. I dont know what it is.

SIR PATRICK Neither do I. I suppose youve been sounded.

RIDGEON Yes, of course. Theres nothing wrong with any of the organs: nothing special, anyhow. But I have a curious aching: I dont know where: I cant localize it. Sometimes I think it’s my heart: sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesnt exactly hurt me; but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is going to happen. And there are other symptoms. Scraps of tunes come into my head that seem to me very pretty, though theyre quite commonplace.

SIR PATRICK Do you hear voices?

RIDGEON No.

SIR PATRICK I’m glad of that. When my patients tell me that theyve made a greater discovery than Harvey, and that they hear voices, I lock them up.

RIDGEON You think I’m mad! Thats just the suspicion that has come across me once or twice. Tell me the truth: I can bear it.

SIR PATRICK Youre sure there are no voices?

RIDGEON Quite sure.

SIR PATRICK Then 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 see 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 doesnt 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 MrWalpole 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, [150] Nut-shaped mass of tissue. 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 bands, 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 snakes 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 matter with you. I can see it in your complexion. I can feel it in the grip of your hand.