Part 8

“That inner office was crowded with cases that reached to the ceiling and overflowed with books and papers and glittering instruments that proclaimed their owner surgeon as well as physician. The old doctor seldom allowed his servants, whom he chose and kept with more kindliness than discretion, to enter it. And it was so full of all sorts of things that it seemed quite disorderly, although its owner could put his hand instantly on anything that he wanted. The whole place was redolent, moreover, of many drugs and, I regret to say, of horse-blankets. Sometimes, for exercise, the old doctor walked on his rounds--paying little heed to the road, moving fast or slow, upright or bent, according to the thought that abstracted him. But mostly he drove in a much-splashed chaise, a handsome, well-blooded, but ill-groomed horse, to which he was devoted. He was faithful all his life to such speedy but shaggy steeds, just as he was to pepper-and-salt suits and large, soft black hats, each precisely like its predecessor. At the conclusion of each of my early visits he would show me, through a window, some dog or cat or bird that he kept in his back yard, for he ranked pets among the consolations of life.

“Even then I was interested in him as a personality, for I had been told how, as a boy, he used to carry a bag of papers and do similar services for his father, a stately and irritable old judge, who was so formidable that few people could see any fatherly pride and affection in him. But as people used to say that the old judge could see in the dark, there is no reason to think that he was blind to his son’s exceptional character and promise, especially as he sent him to college, which was then very unusual in the town. There, after a time, the young fellow decided to go in for medicine. His reasons, which he did not tell his father, were that law was a selfish and soulless career, which contracted, instead of expanding, the mind, but that medicine was an opportunity for both social service and, through its sure and universal truth, an apprehension of the divine disposition of affairs. This last belief he retained throughout his life, his spirit and imagination never capitulating to the fatalism of his profession.

“The old judge died while the boy was in college, leaving an estate composed chiefly of loans to poor people who could not pay, and rich men who were slow to do so. Still, there was enough, with considerable sacrifice on the part of the mother, to enable the young man to complete his college years and go on to a metropolitan university until he earned his degree in medicine. With this, for the time, most exceptional training, and the approbation of his best professors, he returned to the old town to enter upon general practice, so enamored of his profession that he wondered why all men were not physicians.

“He soon won back the intimacy of a few close friends, but soon came, also, to be disappointed in the force and genuineness of most of his townspeople. On the other hand, his own carelessness in dress and indifference to small formalities confirmed the general local suspicion of any one who had been so long ‘away.’ He disconcerted people, also, by his superior knowledge and directness, and his unfailing attack upon whatever savored of weakness or insincerity. Considering the family finances and his own lack of physical ruggedness, he definitely put marriage aside from his calculations, and when this, like most of his conclusions, became known, it further discounted his social availability. Hence, his life soon became restricted almost wholly to his home, his small circle of intimates, and his profession.

“At his profession he continued to work tremendously, giving exhaustive study to each case that came his way, inquiring into local epidemics and sanitation, tirelessly investigating new ideas, and organizing his entire technical knowledge. He cheerfully turned night into day when he was needed, as he did later, when I knew him to get up in the middle of the night to visit a seriously sick patient whom he had already seen before and after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and just before going to bed. Birth and death loomed so large in his horizon that he was far from ever considering what it was in his place to do. Self-forgetful as he was, however, he made no sentimental sacrifices, but was the first to introduce trained nurses into the town, and to urge, everywhere and always, the need for the local hospital that came only long after. He had, even, some dreams of preventive medicine.

“His father’s successor and the group of able lawyers, bankers, and business men that controlled the town, looking upon all of this with favor, determined him, although still young, to be one of themselves, and made him health officer and physician to the county jail and poor-farm. This confirmed his identification with his work until he thought of it all the time, riding, walking, at his desk, at meals, or lying awake at night. In this way, without relaxing his following of the latest professional knowledge, he came to believe increasingly in direct observation and experience, and acquired a discriminating respect for the traditional lore of old men and women. Gradually, more and more people began to see in him the true physician--working for work’s sake, giving time and labor to the poor without reward, a tireless guardian of the lives entrusted to him, a devoted champion and example of all sanity and wholesomeness.

“Some of his traits, however, still delayed his complete success. He was often restless, sometimes impatient in argument, and not always considerate of his opponents. Once he even slapped a recalcitrant patient. He was deeply humiliated over that, and candid and regretful over his other defects, but he held that one could do but little by special effort to change one’s character. He was, moreover, too learned and quick-witted and plain-spoken to be a comfortable colleague for most of his fellow practitioners. They felt obliged to look with disfavor on his preference for simple medicaments and his emphasis on hygiene, and they were publicly pained and privately severe concerning his carelessness of appearances and his open pooh-poohing of what he called ‘the hocus-pocus of the profession.’

“But after his marriage, which was an inconspicuous one, the softer and finer sides of his nature took the permanent ascendency, and the community, although it knew little of his family life, felt a new gentleness behind the firmness of his growing power of command. It was then that he began the practice, which he would have scorned earlier, of carrying in his pockets cheerful and humorous quotations as means for enlivening depressed patients. Thus, slowly but steadily, through some conspicuous successes and many sure ones, his reputation became more and more established, until, at about forty-five, he was accepted by all as unquestionably the chief physician of the town.

“His frankness, however, by no means decreased as his fame advanced, but people increasingly understood his eccentricities as they increasingly honored his intellect and revered his character. He never hesitated to say, for example, that his successes were due more to experience and common sense than to any scientific knowledge. This was, perhaps, a limitation of his location so far from the centres of scholarship, but he would have followed reason rather than authority anywhere. When the chief apothecary caught cold and died from a consumption that the old doctor had long pronounced cured, he lamented that this mistaken judgment had brought him more reputation than any real cure he had ever accomplished, and he would sometimes regretfully compare the tremendous exertions that had gone unrecognized in his earliest practice with the late unreasoning praise of almost everything he did--‘So hard it is,’ he would say, ‘to establish unpopular truth or check popular error.’

“In spite of the fact that his penetration so far exceeded the ordinary that his wit often led him beyond knowledge to track nature to her lair, he used to grieve that so many things were hidden from him. He trusted much to the wisdom of the natural course of things, watching his cases and all their surrounding conditions closely, sweeping away many of the cobwebs of current practice, and emphasizing chiefly prescriptions of hygiene. Most diseases, he held, were either hopeless or would cure themselves if people would be reasonably careful. After his income became adequate for his modest needs he disliked to take money for his services, preferring to get whatever he wanted from the local tradesmen, and to care for them and their families without charge on either side.

“Gradually, without decreasing his labors--I have heard that he made fifty thousand professional calls--he became the community’s philosopher and friend, as well as its physician. This was especially the case after he came home, a citizen of the world, from a late European journey, during which, apparently, he had ignored landscape, architecture, and art in order to converse with all sorts and conditions of men. As his earnestness and meditation increased with age, and his utterance, always unexpected and pithy, grew ever more apt and forcible, his sayings became widely quoted and accumulated into a body of doctrine.

“He was by no means chiefly a critic, for, as he said, there were always more unfortunate men needing encouragement than fortunate men needing reproof. He maintained that a clean mind and busy hands were proof against any tribulation, and that happiness lay not in the world, but within the mind. ‘Whoever would live wisely,’ he would say, ‘must know what he wants,’ and ‘Good humor bears half the ills of life.’

“It will be long, indeed, before his place and his friends forget ‘the Old Doctor.’”

XVI

_Breakfasting with Portia_

“Probably few persons who are not professionally interested,” said Professor Maturin, “realize how earnestly the schools of to-day are endeavoring not only to conserve the proved excellences of traditional knowledge, but also to provide new varieties of training that are made imperative by present-day conditions. Hence the subjects in the curriculum that appear fads to the fathers--nature study, manual training, physical education, household science and art, music, and the fine arts. Probably fewer yet know that American experiment in one of these fields, especially, has been so notable that the British Board of Education sent a special commission to study and to report to Parliament on the teaching of domestic science or household economics in the United States.

“It was the scientific and comprehensive character of this report, sent me by a young friend, that first informed me of our distinction in this difficult field. This same young person had previously overcome my doubt as to the propriety of making such matters the subject of academic study by learnedly quoting Xenophon’s Socrates, to the effect that ‘domestic management is the name of an art, as that of healing or of working in brass, or of building.’

“It should be understood, to be specific, that she, whom we may call Portia, as a present student and a prospective propagandist of domestic science, is about to receive her degree from that part of one of our metropolitan universities which conducts research in education and trains teachers both of the ancient liberal arts and of such modern practical sciences as Portia’s own. After several years devoted to the usual college subjects, her attention is now concentrated upon educational principles and procedures in general, and on the practice and presentation of her chosen subject in particular. For a considerable period she has overflowed with such interesting information concerning the chemistry and biology, the production and manufacture, and the preparation and the assimilation of foods, that I was more than delighted one day to be invited to partake of a breakfast prepared by her and an associate, as one of the numerous practical tests of knowledge and efficiency demanded by her curriculum.

“On my arrival, the Princess Ida who presided over this department of the modern Athenaeum exhibited the equipment for the study and practice of her science,--a technical library of many volumes; elaborate collections of current reports and monographs; photographs, charts, and records of investigations; especially equipped offices and lecture and conference rooms,--and then presented me to the half-dozen instructors under her direction. The laboratories for the biological and chemical study of food materials were not unlike others that I had seen; but those devoted especially to food preparation uniquely combined the facilities of an elaborate club kitchen with the scientific immaculateness of a surgery. The whole I was told, by the way, was merely preparatory to a really perfect set of laboratories which were building.

“A tile-topped laboratory table, with a skeleton gas-stove above, and various drawers and cupboards beneath, stood in the centre of the room for the demonstrator. About this, arranged on three sides, like a banquet table, were perhaps thirty similar but connected desks at which the students sat in trained-nurse uniform, facing their instructor.

“The right hand drawer of each desk contained such familiar small utensils as knives, forks, and spoons, along with certain others that would have seemed strange to our grandmothers; all carefully listed, their condition and arrangement being subject to military inspection. Each drawer at the left contained flours, sugar, spices, and condiments in laboratory precision. The cupboard below each desk, closed by a sliding shutter, contained measuring-cups, bowls, platters, pans, and the like; each equipment being adequate for all ordinary cooking processes. Around the sides of the room were stoves and ranges of various designs heated by coal, charcoal, electricity, steam, gas, and oil, not forgetting the professor’s Aladdin oven, or the peasant’s hay-box cooker.

“Here were also immaculate porcelain sinks where uniformed maids cleaned the larger utensils. Each student kept her own equipment neat. Cases and frames held special implements and supplies drawn from a nearby stock-room, or from library or files. Here and there were bulletin boards displaying tables for computing dietaries, and newspaper clippings concerning the cost of living. In one corner, as an interesting reminder of the needs and possibilities of the simple life in the midst of this intentionally ideal equipment, stood an outfit that might be made and used in the remotest rural school--a cheap but good oil stove, mounted on the zinc-covered top of a packing-box, that included inexpensive examples of the fundamental implements, and had an upturned fruit crate for a seat. This entire outfit cost about four dollars.

“In one of these laboratories, students were making a comparative, experimental study of breads; halting occasionally to hear from the demonstrator and ponder the doctrine of the progression of batters and doughs from corn bread, through waffles, to twin mountain muffins--‘which are the beginning of cake.’ In another room, fruits were being preserved separately and in combinations, and in all mediums from distilled water to heavy syrups. In a third, the visitor was given, as specimens of material for distribution, a mimeographed recipe; a blue-print diagram of the conventional cuts of beef, lamb, veal, and other meats; and a sheet of small photographs showing how typical cuts of good meat should look.

“Meanwhile, Portia and Nerissa had been busy with the breakfast in a separate kitchen and dining-room, as like as possible to those in ordinary homes, yet planned with the best wisdom and taste of the departmental staff. To this dining-room the pilgrim was now summoned by his young friend, costumed as a maid and appearing slightly anxious, for she and her ally were also to serve the meal that they had prepared. The Princess Ida’s premier acted as hostess, and a masculine professor and a feminine instructor joined to make a party, typical, the hostess announced, of sedentary men and of moderately active women--a statement that apprised me of the fact that I was considered not merely as a guest, but also as scientific data. The simple goodness of the linen and china, however, was only that of the discriminating home, and the growing plant on the table was there, I was told, for purely aesthetic reasons.

“But superior knowledge and skill entered with the food--stewed prunes and apricots, astonishing in size, delicious in flavor. Although I am unaccustomed to breakfasting at noon, and although years of housekeeping have been unable to blot out the remembrance of previous prunes, I fell to with avidity. My memory of the ensuing conversation is somewhat mingled with later talks with Portia, but then or afterward, I learned that our total consumption of this dish was only about four ounces, at a cost of approximately three cents for four persons. A home, of course, must also count the cost of all the food prepared, but not consumed.

“The delectable quality of the cereal that followed was due, along with its superior digestibility, I was informed, to its first having been briefly boiled in order to open the grains, by bursting, to the action of the gentler after-cooking. The cost of cereal, I was reminded, was small when compared with that of its accompaniments. We ate one cent’s worth of cereal, but the sugar upon it cost an equal amount, and the cream five times as much. But the professor justified the combination because of the constituent elements of the three; cream being largely fat, sugar largely carbon, cereal largely protein.

“When later I asked Portia what this protein was, she replied in a sort of chant, as though she were assisting at some mystic rite: ‘Next to water, protein is the largest ingredient in the human body, forming about eighteen per cent. It is similar to the white of egg, the lean of meat, the curd of milk, and the gluten of wheat.’ This and other intimations gave me to understand that protein is the _sine qua non_ of dietetics.

“As we enjoyed the admirable omelet which followed--eight ounces: one of proteid, one of fat, one-half ounce of carbo-hydrate; cost ten cents for four--the professor informed me that the nutritive value of food is measured by the heat it gives off in combustion, the unit of computation being the calorie, or the amount of heat which would raise one pound of water four degrees Fahrenheit. Protein and carbo-hydrate yield eighteen hundred to the pound, fats about four thousand. The necessary number of calories per day for a professional man is somewhere between the thirty-two hundred averaged by American and the thirty-three hundred averaged by Japanese university professors. The standard is placed at twenty-seven hundred by the special agent in charge of the United States Department of Agriculture’s investigations in nutrition. Hard muscular labor requires half as much again. These figures are the result of measurements, by means of a so-called respiratory calorimeter, of the entire receipts and expenditures of the human body, under varying conditions and for periods of from three to twelve days. These and similar experiments are described in bulletins published and distributed without charge by the Department of Agriculture. Recent experiments by other investigators make the ideal number of calories considerably less.

“Toasted rolls and drip coffee ended our meal; the former weighed four ounces, two-thirds carbo-hydrate, the remainder equally proteid and fat; the ingredients costing only two cents, or as much as the butter used on them. Throughout, of course, no estimate was made of the cost of labor, an element which, together with rent or interest on equipment, usually more than equals the cost of food. Fuel costs, approximately, one-tenth of this amount.

“Coffee was assigned no nutritive value in the tabular statement of our breakfast that Portia worked out and brought me some days later. But as a mild stimulant, it does more good than harm, very much less harm than tea, which, when not freshly made, contains chemicals difficult of digestion. The coffee we four enjoyed cost approximately three cents.

“When Portia told me that she was also to give a luncheon, with soup, entrée, salad, and a sweet, I fear that I was too precipitate in my commendation of her work, my prophecies for her future, and in implying my willingness again to serve the cause of science. I tried my best, however, to be discreet, for I am very anxious to be invited again, and I was rather pleased at my adroitness in presenting her with an individually bound volume of Ruskin, with the red silk marker at that page of ‘The Ethics of the Dust’ which says of cooking:

“‘It means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Calypso and of Helen and of Rebekah and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices; and of all that is healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats; it means carefulness and inventiveness and watchfulness and willingness and readiness of appliance; it means the economy of your great-grandmothers and the science of modern chemists; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always “ladies”--“loaf-givers;” and, as you are to see, imperatively, that everybody has something pretty to put on, so you are to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something nice to eat.’”

XVII

_Summer Science_

“My young friend, Portia,” said Professor Maturin, “was plainly dubious when I suggested making a week-end visit to the scientific colony where she planned to spend the summer doing research work in biology. She did not believe that I would be interested in observing a hundred college professors and students listening to lectures and looking through microscopes. She implied that occasional visitors were felt, by their holiday moods, somewhat to distract the attention of the serious workers. And, finally, she suggested that I was perhaps temperamentally unsuited to lead the very simple life that prevailed, the place being as unlike as possible to the typical summer resort. However, when I pleaded my sympathetic interest in all things human, modestly called attention to my reputation for discretion, and gently reminded her that I had proved an acceptable and even welcome guest among the peace agitators of Lake Placid, the literati of Onteora, and the artists of Cornish, she ceased to protest. I might do as I liked; she, of course, would be glad to see me.

“So it was that I found myself, one calm Saturday evening, en route for her ‘Marine Biological Laboratory.’ During my sail along the Sound I found myself amusedly wondering whether Portia’s professors would prove to be anything like the important mate who gave so many more and so much louder orders than were necessary, in warping the boat from the dock. I was pleased to find them rather more like the lights that later appeared along the shore--some clear and steady, some brilliant but intermittent, others a trifle spectacular in coloring, all plainly enjoying a comfortable sense of their importance to the community; but all of them interesting, and some performing services really indispensable to human progress.

“The realization of high thinking and, presumably, plain living began with a six o’clock landing next morning and the writer’s earliest breakfast in years, watching, meanwhile, coming events cast their shadows before in the person of a slender spectacled gentleman in blue, who slowly consumed one roll and a cup of frequently diluted coffee, while he rapidly assimilated the contents of a thin, black, scientific-looking volume with round corners and red edges.