.MTM5Nw.MTIwNzc4

19

reassurance and with shocking predictions for her future well-being. Mr. X maintained a heavy and, I thought, stupid silence and I couldn't seem to induce from him the slightest recognition for the heroic [crossed out: measures] attentions with which his wife had been showered. Finally I fell silent out of bewilderment and fatigue and Mr. X got his word in edgewise: "I wanted to know," he said with considerable abruptness, "when could I use my wife again." 'As if she was a cow or a sow,' the attending surgeon said when I passed the story on to him the following day."

  "About the bottom of the human pool," observed the Inspector.
  "It's rather a nasty little anecdote but it impressed me not so

much for its sordidness as for the disproportionate enthusiasm displayed by the hospital ^'staff' and for the wrong reasons. Nothing could be commoner in the practice of gynecology than uterine fibromyomata, so there was no question of observations which could add to medical knowledge. It was simply a resection, on the basis of which Mrs. X became our [??] queen for a day."

  "The prize steer in the cattle show of the pathologists."
  "Exactly."
  "But, Doctor, I don't see anything bad about that.  I think

she was a lucky sow to fall into such attentive hands."

  "I'm not criticizing the passionate care that we lavished

on her. I'm only pointing out to you now what I noted then, as I was groping for some real philosophical basis for the guidance of the [??] and the protection of the patients. Our behavior produced excellent results, but it did lack somewhat in sobriety. If Mrs X's fibroid had been a little more modest in size and mass, a little less grandiose and newsworthy, she would have taken her chances in the normal channels. And perhaps I should say this by way of explanation for what might otherwise seem to you philosophical hair-splitting. Alby was quite ^'right' in his soul-searching concern for the ability of the potential