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

’em well balanced. Well, if Arrowsmith falls for that kind of fellow, no wonder people don’t trust him.”

“That’s so. Hm. Well, it’s too bad Arrowsmith goes drinking and helling around and neglecting his family and his patients. I can see his finish. Shame. Well⁠—wonder what time o’ night it’s getting to be?”

II

Bert Tozer wailed, “Mart, what you been doing to Dr. Coughlin of Leopolis? Fellow told me he was going around saying you were a booze-hoister and so on.”

“Did he? People do sort of keep an eye on one another around here, don’t they?”

“You bet your life they do, and that’s why I tell you you ought to cut out the poker and the booze. You don’t see me needing any liquor, do you?”

Martin more desperately than ever felt the whole county watching him. He was not a praise-eater; he was not proud that he should feel misplaced; but however sturdily he struggled he saw himself outside the picture of Wheatsylvania and trudging years of country practice.

Suddenly, without planning it, forgetting in his admiration for Sondelius and the health war his pride of the laboratory, he was thrown into a research problem.

III

There was blackleg among the cattle in Crynssen County. The state veterinarian had been called and Dawson Hunziker vaccine had been injected, but the disease spread. Martin heard the farmers wailing. He noted that the injected cattle showed no inflammation nor rise in temperature. He was roused by a suspicion that the Hunziker vaccine had insufficient living organisms, and he went yelping on the trail of his hypothesis.

He obtained (by misrepresentations) a supply of the vaccine and tested it in his stuffy closet of a laboratory. He had to work out his own device for growing anaerobic cultures, but he had been trained by the Gottlieb who remarked, “Any man dat iss unable to build a filter out of toot’-picks, if he has to, would maybe better buy his results along with his fine equipment.” Out of a large fruit-jar and a soldered pipe Martin made his apparatus.

When he was altogether sure that the vaccine did not contain living blackleg organisms, he was much more delighted than if he had found that good Mr. Dawson Hunziker was producing honest vaccine.

With no excuse and less encouragement he isolated blackleg organisms from sick cattle and prepared an attenuated vaccine of his own. It took much time. He did not neglect his patients but certainly he failed to appear in the stores, at the poker games. Leora and he dined on a sandwich every evening and hastened to the laboratory, to heat the cultures in the improvised water-bath, an ancient and leaky oatmeal-cooker with an alcohol lamp. The Martin who had been impatient of Hesselink was of endless patience as he watched his results. He whistled and hummed, and the hours from seven to midnight were a moment. Leora, frowning placidly, the tip of her tongue at the corner of her mouth, guarded the temperature like a good little watchdog.

After three efforts with two absurd failures, he had a vaccine which satisfied him, and he injected a stricken herd. The blackleg stopped, which was for Martin the end and the reward, and he turned his notes and supply of vaccine over to the state veterinarian. For others, it was not the end. The veterinarian of the county denounced him for intruding on their right to save or kill cattle; the physicians hinted, “That’s the kind of monkey-business that ruins the dignity of the profession. I tell you Arrowsmith’s a medical nihilist and a notoriety-seeker, that’s what he is. You mark my words, instead of his sticking to decent regular practice, you’ll be hearing of his opening a quack sanitarium, one of these days!”

He commented to Leora:

“Dignity, hell! If I had my way I’d be doing research⁠—oh, not this cold detached stuff of Gottlieb but really practical work⁠—and then I’d have some fellow like Sondelius take my results and jam ’em down people’s throats, and I’d make them and their cattle and their tabby-cats healthy whether they wanted to be or not, that’s what I’d do!”

In this mood he read in his Minneapolis paper, between a half column on the marriage of the light middleweight champion and three lines devoted to the lynching of an I.W.W. agitator, the announcement:

Gustave Sundelios, well-known authority on cholera prevention, will give an address on “Heroes of Health” at the University summer school next Friday evening.

He ran into the house gloating, “Lee! Sondelius going to lecture in Minneapolis. I’m going! Come on! We’ll hear him and have a bat and everything!”

“No, you run down by yourself. Be fine for you to get away from the town and the family and me for a while. I’ll go down with you in the fall. Honestly. If I’m not in the way, maybe you can manage to have a good long talk with Dr. Sondelius.”

“Fat chance! The big city physicians and the state health authorities will be standing around him ten deep. But I’m going.”

IV

The prairie was hot, the wheat rattled in a weary breeze, the day-coach was gritty with cinders. Martin was cramped by the hours of slow riding. He drowsed and smoked and meditated. “I’m going to forget medicine and everything else,” he vowed. “I’ll go up and talk to somebody in the smoker and tell him I’m a shoe-salesman.”

He did. Unfortunately his confidant happened to be a real shoe-salesman, with a large curiosity as to what firm Martin represented, and he returned to the day coach with a renewed sense of injury. When he reached Minneapolis, in mid-afternoon, he hastened to the University and besought a ticket to the Sondelius lecture before he had even found a hotel, though not before he had found the long glass of beer which he had been picturing for a hundred miles.

He had an informal but agreeable notion of spending his first evening of freedom in dissipation. Somewhere he would meet a