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that some lower portion of the heart would have picked up some kind of beat, even though not very suitably. The gift of pulsation dribbles down the conduction system, losing its way as it goes, so that sparks may come from the auricles or the ventricles; and a useful regular beat can be dictated through the main line, although by the time such a rhythm gets down to the ventricles as a place of origin, it's too slow to be serviceable. The artificial pace-maker assumes an arbitrary control over such sporadic efforts at pace setting."
"I see, well now, to get back to the tolling bell, how many of those
medical students, in that laboratory or that lecture hall, how many of them heard it as a divine tone?"
"I suppose your question is rhetorical, Inspector, since
I have no idea of how to answer it. And of course I don't mean to draw an implication of divinity in terms of a specific intervention by a Methodist or a Catholic god. I meant, of course, that the liberality, the marvelous works of nature, could well exact from human students a worshipful respect which might preserve them from personal despair and deterioration as well as from futility and crime. Stop and think that even art is lost when we no longer have the vision of the marvelousness and vastness of life. There's nothing left but triviality, petulance and a kind of scruffy anarchy."
"There's plenty of that around today." "And now another flash-back occurs to me, that served as a
kind of counterpart vision. That came in bacteriology. We used to study slides received from the public health agencies in order to become familiar with the appearance and staining properties of the different pathogenetic organisms. One day I took the slide which was passed to me, applied a drop of oil and began twisting the adjustors to bring the film of stained material into view. I opened the diaphragm to adjust more light and, that day, I saw a most impressive sight. Out of the luminous microscopic vastness of space, a great blue cloud took form, with