One evening the doctor on coming home tossed a card over to Jenkins
with the remark, “Better come to the lecture and hear me talk the money
out of the public pocket.”
Jenkins looked at the card and saw it admitted him at 8 p. m. on the
coming Thursday evening to a lecture on Scientific Research by Sir
Charles Smith-Brown, Dsc. M.D., etc., etc. Jenkins thanked him and put
the card in his pocket and on the next Thursday he presented his ticket
punctually at the time and place appointed.
The small lecture room was already well filled when Jenkins entered
and he noticed that the first four or five rows of seats were railed
off by a crimson cord from the rest and in these were seated people
that Jenkins recognized immediately as “gentlefolk.” They were all very
well dressed in semi-evening dress and had, for the most part, nice
kind-looking intelligent faces. Jenkins spirits rose as he saw them.
“Surely they can’t easily be humbugged,” he thought, “they’ve been
taught to read and think and had plenty of time for schooling.”
He slipped quietly into a vacant seat he saw some rows back of the red
cord. Here the people were all in hats and coats and had evidently come
on foot to the meeting. Their faces were harder looking than those in
front but they also looked intelligent, interested and alert. Jenkins
particularly liked the look of his neighbour. A hard working man he
should think, perhaps a small tradesman running his own business or
perhaps a clerk, anyway he looked keen and quick as a man with his own
decided ideas and opinions.
The platform was now filling up with figures: the ladies resplendent
in gay coloured Opera cloaks and wearing jewels in their beautifully
dressed hair, the men showing large expanses of shirt front. Among
these Jenkins noted the sleek form of the doctor and a glow of hatred
seemed to spread through him as he noted the suave smile on the thin
lips and the benign expression of the whole face so different from the
set, savage stare Jenkins was familiar with as the man worked in his
laboratory, tearing muscle and nerve out of quivering flesh.
“Blasted hypocrite,” he thought furiously to himself and then he noted
the eyes of his neighbour quickly passing over the platform as the
stately and imposing figures filed onto it quietly and took their
appointed seats.
“Who are they all?” he asked in an undertone of the keen faced one.
“Regular swells, all of them,” the man returned in the same discreet
voice which was quick like his eyes. “That’s the Marquis of Sedlestone
in the chair and that’s Lord and Lord and Lord,” he ran off the names
so quickly Jenkins could hardly catch them. “He’s gulled them all. They
all believe in him and this beastly Research. That’s what beats me. How
they can be such fools.”
Jenkins nodded sympathetically. He felt happier. Evidently this man
beside him knew the truth of things. He longed intensely to confide in
him and tell him what _he_ knew but he controlled the impulse. If
he was to carry out successfully his great scheme absolute secrecy and
concealment of his own feelings was necessary. There was no time for
further talk in any case for after a few preliminaries on the platform
had been arranged, there was the silver tinkle of a bell and the
Marquis of Sedlestone rose to address the audience.
There was absolute silence in the hall and Jenkins listened
breathlessly to every word.
“My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, we have the privilege to-night of
being gathered together to listen to one of the most distinguished men
of our time, Sir Charles Brown-Smith, M.D. Dsc. Science may be said to
be the leading force in the world to-day and in him we see one of its
most brilliant exponents.” (Applause.) “Science to-day is advancing
with the steps of a giant. Disease and decay are fading, diminishing,
vanishing before it.”
“What bosh all that is when they can’t cure a common cold,” thought
Jenkins.
“Maladies are disappearing. Yellow fever is conquered, consumption all
but conquered, cancer--”
“Is increasing,” shouted a voice at the back of the hall.
There was some laughter in the back seats but only a slight offended
rustle from the front rows.
“Alas! Yes,” continued the suave well-modulated voice from the
platform. “As my friend at the back of the hall has remarked, cancer is
increasing and that proves that more research is needed, more patient
labour, more funds, more encouragement for those noble men and women
who--”
“You’ve been at it now over twenty years,” interrupted the voice in a
dominant tone that filled the hall, “and had buckets of money poured
into it, without an atom of result, except that cancer is spreading
everywhere all the time, and it’s you people who are doing it. You’re
not stopping it: you’re spreading it with your beastly laboratories all
full of animals dying of it. Aren’t they breathing out cancer all the
time? Aren’t their cages full of it? Aren’t the men who look after them
carrying cancer germs with them everywhere?”
While these strident questions were being hurled at him, the noble
Marquis had waited silent on the platform, looking slightly annoyed and
after a second or two he turned and made some observation to a young
man sitting behind him, who rose immediately and left the platform by
its side door. There had been some applause from various parts of the
hall as these questions full of scalding contempt had been shouted out
and heads were turned and necks craned to see who the interrupter was.
Only the front rows sat unmoved as if they had not heard, their eyes
fixed before them waiting for the authorised speaker to continue and
a few seconds after the young man had disappeared from the platform,
there was a violent scuffle at the back of the room. Between two stout
men of the law the interrupter was unceremoniously bundled out.
“There’s the Free Speech of England to-day,” came a caustic whisper
from Jenkins’ bright-eyed neighbour, “if ever there’s a revolution in
England, it’ll be these damned medical men who are at the bottom of it.”
Jenkins again nodded in silence. The noble Marquis was proceeding.
“As I was saying, Science had made the most remarkable advances and
suffering Humanity could turn its eyes hopefully to the future where
disease would be stamped out, pain practically abolished, and the
onset of old age delayed by 50 or 70 years. But I will not detain you
longer. I will leave to our distinguished lecturer the pleasing task of
explaining to you how these marvels will be accomplished.”
“Awful tosh,” murmured keen-eyes as the noble Marquis took his seat and
Sir Charles Brown-Smith rose to address the meeting.
“My Lords, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “my noble friend has
promised you that I shall tell you some of the most recent marvels
Science has accomplished and I will not disappoint you, but first I
should like to say a few words on that vexed question--experiments on
living animals. Some evilly disposed persons have recently been trying
to oppose the glorious march of Science by suggesting that there is
cruelty connected with these experiments that are so vital to our work,
so necessary to its success, so far reaching in their results for
suffering humanity. I wish now to state that in my work I am frequently
obliged to resort to these experiments and also to witness them in the
studies of others and I can confidently assure you that there is not
an atom of cruelty connected with them.” Here the doctor paused and
beamed upon his docile audience through his large spectacles while a
gentle smile suffused his whole benign countenance. A warm murmur of
grateful applause rose from the seats beyond the red cord: the mass of
the people at the back listened in sullen silence: an indrawn breath of
sheer astonishment from Jenkins greeted this stupendous lie.
“The animals,” continued the doctor, “who have the honour of being
permitted to share in this glorious work, are cared for with devoted
attention, no effort is spared in seeing that they are properly housed
and well fed. They have every comfort and to see them sporting behind
the bars of their spacious cages one would imagine they were rejoicing
in their great destiny.”
Jenkins, on hearing this, simply turned in his chair, open mouthed to
his companion of the keen eyes, and met their clear quizzical gaze
fixed upon him.
“Good one, that eh?” keen-eyes murmured.
“Ananias!” shouted an unregenerate person at the back of the hall,
“what about your starving experiments?”
The doctor deigned no reply and the former scuffling sounds being
repeated, the audience knew that the interrupter had been removed and
the English tradition of liberty again upheld.
“Well fed, well cared for, watched over,” continued the doctor blandly,
“and all they have to suffer is the trifling discomfort of a quick
prick from an inoculating needle or a variation of their usual diet.”
As these lies poured smoothly forth in the great man’s mellow voice,
Jenkins saw before him the rows of desolate zinc floored cages, each
with its tortured inmate moaning out its life, he saw the puppies
starving and distorted beyond recognition in the experiment for
rickets, the dog blinded and sitting in hopeless agonies because his
eyes had been taken to graft into another dog’s sockets, the monkeys
wasted to a skeleton or hugely swelled, going blind and semi-paralysed
because their thyroid gland had been cut out, all these horrible sights
rose before him and he gazed at the speaker, stupefied and dumb.
His neighbour spoke in a low voice in his ear, very low because he had
no wish to be turned out. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the
red cord.
“Why on earth they don’t see that he’s guying them, beats me,” he said.
“So now let us dismiss this myth of cruelty from our mind, let us
remember that great men are rarely cruel and let us refuse to believe
these unjust libels that ignorant and prejudiced people are so wantonly
spreading.” Here the doctor’s voice took on a mild severity and the red
corders all warmly applauded.
The speaker proceeded.
“I have mentioned how this myth of cruelty impedes the progress
of Science but I shall now touch upon something that is even more
obstructive to our success: something that is constantly hampering
us in our forward march, and that is in this country the absence of
compulsion. Yes, my friends, it is true: we are suffering from too much
liberty. Liberty is a very excellent thing, a fine thing, but it can be
pushed too far, we can have too much of it.”
“_Never_,” from the back benches.
“Pardon me, we can have too much even of liberty. Liberty which
harms ourselves, liberty which harms others must be curtailed. I
say unhesitatingly that liberty to refuse the untold benefits of
vaccination, of inoculation, is an evil. Those who are so blind as to
fail to see the benefits, for themselves, should be forced to accept
them. I look forward personally to that time, not I trust, far distant,
when like our great sister nation, America, we shall have compulsion
for everything that is now left to the ignorant individual to decide
for himself.”
At this point the red corders began to move uneasily in their chairs
and look at each other. They were not quite so sure about all this.
“What can the individual know about the uses or the benefits of the
processes offered to him, which he so often rashly and fatally refuses?
Is it fair to throw the burden of deciding upon him? How far better
that the man of Science, the man who knows, should decide for him and
_compel_ him to accept the inestimable blessings of Science! I am
pleased to say there is a great forward movement to be noticed lately
in this direction, no one can enter the Army or the Navy or any public
service, nor can a boy go to a public school without being vaccinated
for instance, very excellent, very admirable and now that we have the
Ministry of Health we may look forward to suitable laws being passed
which will bring every individual, no matter of what class or station
under the grasp of the healing hand of Science. Personally I think,
and I hope, it will not be long before that simple and so necessary
operation of taking out the tonsils will be made compulsory.”
“I should like to say a word,” came a voice from the back and it was so
hollow, so sepulchral that it attracted instant attention and even the
red corders looked round to see to whom it belonged.
A young man of a pallid countenance and hollow cheeks was standing up
and the doctor seeing the audience was interested and would like to
hear what the interrupter had to say, affected to be quite willing and
waited for him to continue.
“I was well and strong,” proceeded the pale cheeked one in his
remarkable voice which went all over the hall, “till a medical chap
looked down my throat and advised me to have my tonsils cut out. I
didn’t know what I was in for and went to a hospital and had it done.
It’s a horrible operation and I suffered for a week after. Well, it’s
done I think and that’s that. But it wasn’t over as I thought. My
tonsils grow now since they’ve been cut. In a year I was told they
must be done again and now I’ve been through that damned thing _five
times_. I lose a lot of blood each time over it, it gets on my
nerves, and I’m a wreck. That’s what cutting out tonsils has done for
me. And I know it’s wrong now. The tonsils are filters put in our
throats to filter the air before it reaches the lungs and to stop bad
germs going further. I know now what Nature put ’em there for and I say
it’s a crying shame to take them out.”
This last was shouted defiantly and the young man paler than ever
before and with beads of sweat standing out on his corpse-like
countenance sat down.
There was dead silence for a moment in the hall where Truth for a
second had flitted through the fog of lies rising from the platform and
rent it with her sharp wings.
Then the doctor, very suave, very smiling, took up his parable again.
“My young friend has indeed suffered and we must extend our sympathies
to him. At the same time we must not allow our judgment to be
influenced by one unfortunate accidental case, when we know that
millions are benefited.”
“Who says they are?” shouted back the young man. “Only you doctor
people, not those who’ve been through it!”
“And who should know better than the doctors?” blandly returned the
lecturer. “That is just the very point I was going to elaborate when
my young friend interrupted me. Perhaps he himself has been benefited,
perhaps had he not taken the first advice he would have been now
suffering from some malady worse than the mere loss of his tonsils,
perhaps he would not have been here at all.”
The red corders nodded solemnly at this and gave some faint indications
of applause. In the back seats the young man muttered “Rot,” but the
doctor was proceeding with his lecture and the young man and Truth were
definitely squashed.
Jenkins sat in his seat wondering. Had the young man made any
impression on the red corders or not? He thought not. They had come
there determined to hear the doctor, determined to hear no one else.
They were determined to believe in him and to refuse to believe anyone
else. That was their attitude. The doctor went on.
“To compel people to be healthy and happy surely that is what the
laws should aim at and while now having grown up in our present lax
system of pleasing himself, the individual may feel it hard to have
his liberty curtailed I look forward to the future in which the child
having been brought up on scientific principles from the first will
not miss what he has never had--his liberty. Yes, that is the ideal,
ladies and gentlemen, the child, we shall begin with the child. We
shall take him from the cradle, nay more we shall deal with the mother
beforehand, so that his pre-natal welfare will be studied. In the
future we shall no longer see the poor neglected child clinging to the
hand of its slatternly mother and sucking at the noxious sweets she has
in her ignorance bought for it. No! We shall see a little being, gently
led by a sweet faced hospital nurse, his eyes carefully protected by
glasses, his pearly teeth already stopped with gold and supported by
plates. No dirty clothes to harbor disease about him, he is dressed
in the neat and simple uniform provided by the State. And within his
little frame has been as carefully tended, his tonsils removed he need
not dread tonsillitis, his appendix taken away what cause has he to
fear appendicitis, _X_-rayed every week, no disease can approach
him unperceived. Vaccinated every year against small-pox, inoculated
frequently for typhoid and all the murderous maladies that surround us,
here is my ideal little citizen of the future. He faces life armed by
Science against all ills. Is it not an inspiring picture?”
The doctor paused and beamed in a fatherly way as if the little
monstrosity he had conjured up by his words were on the platform,
before him.
The red corders gave some applause, there was dead silence at the back
for a second, then a voice asked:
“What about his little legs and arms, Mister, has he got ’em still, or
have they been sawn off and artificial ones hooked on?”
Loud laughter from all the back benches greeted this interruption. When
it had subsided the doctor replied gravely:
“Certainly nothing would be done to remove his limbs unnecessarily, if
on the other hand any accident happened to him there are artificial
limbs in readiness so carefully thought out, so exquisitely fashioned
that they function nearly as well as the natural ones.”
“Rats!” came an angry voice from the wooden benches and a young man
sprang to his feet. He looked like an ex-soldier, his face was pale and
thin with a hectic flush burning on his cheek-bones. One sleeve hung
empty by his side.
“Look at me!” he shouted, “I had my arm taken off in the war by some of
you devils. Wasn’t a bit necessary, ordinary nursing would have saved
it. But what’s that to you? You don’t care for flesh and blood, you
only care for your devilish devices. I had a flesh wound and off you
took my arm and gave me a false one, a thing all straps and buckles
and springs that tortured me like hell. I was kept on view and taught
to pick up a pin when the Queen came to see me. What good’s that to
me? The whole thing fell to pieces after a week or two. You leave us
alone and our children too. We don’t want your spectacles and your
false teeth and your _X_-rays. Leave our young ’uns alone as God
made ’em. That’s what I say.” He sat down and all those at the back
applauded loudly.
The doctor on the platform gave his shoulders an infinitesimal shrug
and waited in silence until the storm had subsided. Then he continued
in a pained voice, as one grieved by the deep ingratitude of the world.
“Again I can only say we must not judge from unfortunate exceptions.
Artificial limbs are and have been and will always be a great boon to
humanity.”
“We prefer to keep our own, thank you!” retorted the young man, which
remark the doctor passed over with a patient air and continued his
lecture.
There was nothing new in it. The same old rubbish that is always set
afloat by the doctors and scientific men and then repeated pompously
from mouth to mouth without examination by the asses in society was
duly brought forward here.
As the doctor himself with his usual cynicism would have remarked, “Why
take the trouble to invent a new lie when you can still gull the public
with the old one?”
He cited the great benefits that Science had conferred on humanity in
the War, how inoculation had saved the troops from typhoid without
explaining why a hundred thousand had died after Gallipoli.
He dilated on the wonderful advantages of the _X_-ray without
mentioning the countless victims who had been slowly roasted to death
under it.
He expatiated on anti-toxin cures of diphtheria without explaining why
the death rate from diphtheria had gone up and not down since its use
and without mentioning that Bella Donna is a specific for that disease
and there is no need whatever for anti-toxin which involves the most
hideous suffering to horses.
Lies and lies and more lies flowed from his lips until it seemed
to Jenkins he got choked with them. A hurried sip of water and he
brought his speech to a close with the usual appeal for more funds for
Research, that noble work in which thousands of selfless men and women
(like himself, he implied) were spending their lives. After that came
some whisper and a little fluttering pause. Then the Chairman announced
amidst applause from the red corders that a cheque for 50,000 pounds
had been received from a member of the audience who wished to remain
anonymous, for the splendid work--the direct result of the doctor’s
moving address.
With hissing and booing the company at the back got on to their feet
and made for the doors.
Jenkins and his neighbour went out together. A line of well appointed,
lighted motors stood outside. The two men paused as if with one accord
and waited watching the well dressed crowd come out, get into their
cars and roll smoothly away.
“There they go,” keen-eyes said bitterly, “home to sleep in their
downy beds or to eat and drink with never a thought of the agony of
the poor suffering animals. Fools! Led by the nose by that criminal
lunatic that’s been telling them all that rubbish this evening. And
they’ve _got_ the brains to see through it all, that’s what makes
me so mad with them. It’s not as if they were stupid or uneducated
and _couldn’t_ think for themselves. They _won’t_ think.”
He stopped and drew a pipe from his pocket and began filling it and
ramming in the tobacco. “I used to think well of the upper classes
at one time. I know they are unselfish and they work hard lots of
them and do a lot of good to others but the way they’ve swallowed
all this cant about Scientific Research, the way they shut their
eyes and ears to the truth has disgusted me with them. We’ve got
regular devil-worship in England now. What these so-called scientific
chaps do in their laboratories is appalling. It’s just sheer lust of
killing and torturing, lust run wild and those fools patronise it and
_because_ they patronise it, every man-jack in the Kingdom, got
to pay for it. We’ve got to struggle along and pay taxes that fellows
like this Smith-Brown may enjoy themselves wallowing in a horrible
vice. I tell you I’ve read about devil-worship in Africa and whole
communities being under the thumb of a few priests and we’ve jolly well
got exactly the same thing going on in England to-day. The health of
the country is being ruined, the blood and the brains of the people
all messed up by the filthy inoculations and vaccinations and we are
breeding more and more men with this lust in their brains for tearing
living things to pieces and those people are responsible for all this.”
He jerked his thumb in the direction of the departing motors gliding
away soundlessly bearing their freights of humanity, good hearted,
kindly persons for the most part, but utterly blinded by a foolish and
fanatical belief: just as completely as the simple savage peoples of
darkest Africa are blinded by their medicine men when they order them
to gash their breasts and throw their mutilated babies into the flames.
“What can we do?” pursued keen-eyes as the two men turned away into
the darkness of the wet streets. “We’re poor, we can’t do anything. We
can’t get at the public to tell it what’s going on. If we’re ill we’re
lugged off to these beastly hospitals and cut up alive, we’re forced
to send our children to school and the doctors there cut’em about as
they like, what can we do? But those people, they _could_ alter
things, one of those lords owns a newspaper, if he studied the thing
up, he could set it all out in his paper and squash the whole thing. He
could show up these scientific men and what they do. He could show that
this whole craze for torturing animals was just a form of lunacy. The
nation wouldn’t support it for two minutes if it were once told what
it was. But he does nothing, he uses his paper just to help the thing
on. Then those other lords, they could speak in their House and say
outright what it was--just devil-worship--but they allow themselves to
be humbugged like all the rest of the fools.”
After a pause keen-eyes started again in his quick fiery way.
“What I keep on hoping is that the medical profession itself will
see what a mistake they are making. Already a number of doctors have
declared themselves against experiments on animals. That’s the root
of the whole trouble. Experiments on living animals. The doctors are
wrongly trained from the beginning. The young men, the medical students
in their classes, at their lectures, see a living animal being operated
upon, being cut up, before them. Sometimes it is under an anaesthetic,
sometimes partially so, sometimes not at all. They are taught that
this is right, they are trained to cut the animal up alive themselves.
They are trained to see the animal writhing and struggling in its
helpless agonies and shown how to inflict them. These men are young
men, they are just at that age when the brain is most susceptible to
impressions, when the character is forming, when there are terrible
impulses towards evil and equally great yearnings toward good. It is
quite easy to see what an effect these classes must have upon them,
these spectacles of the living pulsating form of an animal being torn
in pieces, by an older man, who is evidently absolutely indifferent
to the horrible suffering he is causing. And this effect is evil. At
first many of these young men do feel horror at the sight, they feel
the normal sympathy everyone should feel at the sight of suffering.
Then they are jeered at by their older companions. They are told that
callous man who is sinking his knife between muscle and bone cutting
the nerves of the poor moaning victim is doing _right_ and a great
man. Thus they are initiated into the devil worship. Sometimes the
young students overcome by the revolt of all their natural instincts
against it, faint at the revolting sight. They are carried out of the
class room and revived. By the order of the professor they are brought
back and _made_ to witness the lingering torments of the animal
on the operating-table They are being hardened. Day by day they are
trained thus and gradually their normal feelings begin to change.
From sickness and revolt at the horrors they see done, they come to a
liking for them, a wish to participate in them, they become abnormal.
Their brains having been shocked at the most sensitive age, they become
deflected from their true balance. Those feelings of justice, mercy,
sympathy and pity which distinguish the worthy human being disappear
and the normal young man who commenced his medical course is at the
end of it an abnormal ill balanced creature with that impulse towards
cruelty we notice in the monkey highly developed and the qualities
of man carefully trained out of his crooked brain. And it is from
this material we make our doctors! The men we call in to treat our
beloved sick, to minister to our dear ones when dying! Heavens, what a
farce! Doctors above all men should be highly trained in sympathy and
justice. Nothing should be allowed to cloud or shock the brain of the
young medical student. A clear judgment, great power of observation,
great sympathy with all suffering, reverence for life. These are the
qualities we want in our doctors and should therefore be cultivated in
our medical students. All that is necessary for the healing of the
human body can be learned from the careful observation of that body in
health and in sickness and in death. Anatomy can be far better taught
by cutting up the dead human body than the living animal.”
He stopped and there was silence between them as they plodded on.
Jenkins felt too crushed and wretched to be able to collect his
thoughts and he knew it was not safe for him, with his ultimate object
in view, to reveal himself or his sentiments to anyone. He felt vaguely
comforted by the companionship of this other man who evidently, like
himself, knew the truth, but he dared not confide in him. He could only
listen in silence. The other did not seem to mind. He appeared to know
instinctively that Jenkins was of one mind with himself and he asked no
questions. At the corner of Oxford Street he stopped and held out his
hand.
“I wait here,” he said, “my bus’ll be along presently. Goodnight, it’s
a bad business but remember this, _it can’t last_. The day will
come when this gigantic fraud on the public, this Scientific Research,
will be exposed. We mayn’t be here to see it, worse luck, for it will
take a long time but it must come. All frauds come to the same end.”
Jenkins grasped his hand and wrung it, the kind keen eyes met his for
a moment. Then they had parted and Jenkins was drifting down a side
street alone with his hands driven down deep into the pockets of his
overcoat and clenched there.
What _could_ he do, what _could_ he do to unveil this
stupendous lie? To raise this flimsy curtain of a _name_ and show
the filthy loathsome lust that cowered behind it. He walked and walked
desperately up one street and down another. He did not know or care
where he went. He would walk through the night and only turn up at this
loathsome work in the morning. The utter horror of the whole thing
enveloped him like a cloud and his terrible impotence in the matter
seemed like something stifling suffocating him. He believed he could
kill the doctor and so save a certain amount of horrible suffering
but that was so little against the whole mass of evil and error that
a small band of men had managed to let loose upon the world. For the
whole world was affected. This folly of blind belief in the words of
men who dubbed themselves wise and learned, beneficent and infallible,
had spread its sickly snare not over one country nor quarter but over
the whole world. Hospitals, laboratories are found everywhere and
though there were wise and thinking people also everywhere they did not
seem numerous enough nor strong enough to stop the march of Evil. Would
the day of deliverance ever come? He wondered dismally as keen-eyes had
predicted. For the present this devil-worship was all on the up-grade.
More taxes were being levied, more money thrown into the hands of the
medicine men, more hospitals being built, more research laboratories
being endowed. Jenkins wandered on through the damp, black streets
depressed to the very uttermost. That lecture had pushed him down to
the very depths of despair, just as Doctor Smith-Brown had cynically
foreseen it would do. He saw that Jenkins had still some faith in the
common sense of ordinary people. The doctor determined he should attend
the lecture and see for himself how easily and completely they were
taken in and deluded. Towards morning, stiff and aching in every limb
he got back to the laboratory. It was dark and cold: fires and lights
were out and a low moaning of unutterable anguish filled the darkness.
Jenkins went heavily up the stairs to his bed, wretched beyond
description, oppressed by the wickedness of one half of the world and
the stupidity of the other half.