THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA
A monologue from the
play by George
Bernard Shaw
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from The Doctor's Dilemma, Getting Married, and The Shewing-Up
of Blanco Posnet. Bernard Shaw. New York: Brentano's, 1909. |
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SIR PATRICK: 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 doesn't come until
afterwards, when you've 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. I
know your Cutler Walpoles and their like. They've found out that
a man's body is 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 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, 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 can't go out to dinner now
without your neighbor bragging to you of some useless operation
or other.
MORE MONOLOGUES BY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW |
