For the ordeal of biopsy, whatever it might be, I summoned my meager
contempt. A long experience of surgery is a poor indoctrination for
each new need of it. Ringed about with sadists in white suits, with
sterile techniques, with inquisitional steel, I have been too often the
Exposed Nerve. I do not hope much, any more--and only defy so long as
I am able. This artificial pose, garnished with calm and with smiling,
is what some men call courage, and others dignity, but no man in his
right mind evokes without cost: _we are the hateful survivors of our
sciences_.
It was a little thing.
A needle's prick in an alabastrine clinic. A numb diddling above the
tonsil. Some blood to spit out.
The one sharp experience was the slight widening of the surgeon's eyes
when first he saw my throat.
Go on, I thought. Tell me that the cure of cancer depends upon its
early recognition! Ask me if I haven't read the advertisements of the
Society! And ask yourself, you smooth-faced blue-eyed son-of-a-bitch,
if you have checked the area behind your own uvula lately!