Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (learn to read books txt) 📕

you require. Why, my boy, you won’t need to sit up nights using your hands in this wasteful way, but just think things out and take up possible extensions of the work⁠—cover all the possible fields. We’ll extend this to everything! We’ll have scores of physicians in hospitals helping us and confirming our results and widening our efforts⁠ ⁠… We might have a weekly council of all these doctors and assistants, with you and me jointly presiding⁠ ⁠… If men like Koch and Pasteur had only had such a system, how much more scope their work might have had! Efficient universal cooperation⁠—that’s the thing in science today⁠—the time of this silly, jealous, fumbling individual research has gone by.

“My boy, we may have found the real thing⁠—another salvarsan! We’ll publish together! We’ll have the whole world talking! Why, I lay awake last night thinking of our magnificent opportunity! In a few months we may be curing not only staph infections but typhoid, dysentery! Martin, as your colleague, I do not for a moment wish to detract from the great credit which is yours, but I must say that if you had been more closely allied with Me you would have extended your work to practical proofs and results long before this.”

Martin wavered back to his room, dazzled by the view of a department of his own, assistants, a cheering world⁠—and ten thousand a year. But his work seemed to have been taken from him, his own self had been taken from him; he was no longer to be Martin, and Gottlieb’s disciple, but a Man of Measured Merriment, Dr. Arrowsmith, Head of the Department of Microbic Pathology, who would wear severe collars and make addresses and never curse.

Doubts enfeebled him. Perhaps the X Principle would develop only in the test-tube; perhaps it had no large value for human healing. He wanted to know⁠—to know.

Then Rippleton Holabird burst in on him:

“Martin, my dear boy, the Director has just been telling me about your discovery and his splendid plans for you. I want to congratulate you with all my heart, and to welcome you as a fellow department-head⁠—and you so young⁠—only thirty-four, isn’t it? What a magnificent future! Think, Martin”⁠—Major Holabird discarded his dignity, sat astride a chair⁠—“think of all you have ahead! If this work really pans out, there’s no limit to the honors that’ll come to you, you lucky young dog! Acclaim by scientific societies, any professorship you might happen to want, prizes, the biggest men begging to consult you, a ripping place in society!

“Now listen, old boy: Perhaps you know how close I am to Dr. Tubbs, and I see no reason why you shouldn’t come in with us, and we three run things here to suit ourselves. Wasn’t it simply too decent of the Director to be so eager to recognize and help you in every way! So cordial⁠—and so helpful. Now you really understand him. And the three of us⁠—Some day we might be able to erect a superstructure of cooperative science which would control not only McGurk but every institute and every university scientific department in the country, and so produce really efficient research. When Dr. Tubbs retires, I have⁠—I’m speaking with the most complete confidence⁠—I have some reason to suppose that the Board of Trustees will consider me as his successor. Then, old boy, if this work succeeds, you and I can do things together!

“To be ever so frank, there are very few men in our world (think of poor old Yeo!) who combine presentable personalities with first-rate achievement, and if you’ll just get over some of your abruptness and your unwillingness to appreciate big executives and charming women (because, thank God, you do wear your clothes well⁠—when you take the trouble!) why, you and I can become the dictators of science throughout the whole country!”

Martin did not think of an answer till Holabird had gone.

He perceived the horror of the shrieking bawdy thing called Success, with its demand that he give up quiet work and parade forth to be pawed by every blind devotee and mud-spattered by every blind enemy.

He fled to Gottlieb as to the wise and tender father, and begged to be saved from Success and Holabirds and A. DeWitt Tubbses and their hordes of address-making scientists, degree-hunting authors, pulpit orators, popular surgeons, valeted journalists, sentimental merchant princes, literary politicians, titled sportsmen, statesmenlike generals, interviewed senators, sententious bishops.

Gottlieb was worried:

“I knew Tubbs was up to something idealistic and nasty when he came purring to me, but I did not t’ink he would try to turn you into a megaphone all so soon in one day! I will gird up my loins and go oud to battle with the forces of publicity!”

He was defeated.

“I have let you alone, Dr. Gottlieb,” said Tubbs, “but, hang it, I am the Director! And I must say that, perhaps owing to my signal stupidity, I fail to see the horrors of enabling Arrowsmith to cure thousands of suffering persons and to become a man of weight and esteem!”

Gottlieb took it to Ross McGurk.

“Max, I love you like a brother, but Tubbs is the Director, and if he feels he needs this Arrowsmith (Is he the thin young fellow I see around your lab?) then I have no right to stop him. I’ve got to back him up the same as I would the master of one of our ships,” said McGurk.

Not till the Board of Trustees, which consisted of McGurk himself, the president of the University of Wilmington, and three professors of science in various universities, should meet and give approval, would Martin be a department-head. Meantime Tubbs demanded:

“Now, Martin, you must hasten and publish your results. Get right to it. In fact you should have done it before this. Throw your material together as rapidly as possible and send a note in to the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, to be published in their next proceedings.”

“But I’m not ready to publish! I want to have every loophole plugged up before I