36 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
36 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
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You might find this funny. The last time I sent
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it out, everyone thought I had fallen off my rocker...
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"The Professor was unconscious of the passage of time, the
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atmosphere in the room, or the necessity for food and
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drink. He was a thin little white-haired man with large
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spectacles who was standing behind his desk talking
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enthusiast- ically about a little-known variety of louse.
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Lice were the Professor's life. For thirty years they had
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filled his thoughts during the day and spilled into his
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dreams at night. He had, at points during that time,
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married and raised five children, but he was only faintly
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aware of these occurrences. The fore- ground of his mind
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was filled by lice. He spent his time in his own small
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laboratory on the top floor of the hospital wholly occupied
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in studying their habits. He rarely came near his
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students. He left the teaching to his as- sitants and
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considered he had done his share by occasionalyy wandering
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round the students' laboratory, which he did with the
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bemused air of a man whose wife has invited a lot of people
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he didn't know to a party. He insisted, however, in giving
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to each class a series of lectures on his specialty. He
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was the greatest authority on lice in the world, and when
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he lectured to o other pathologists in Melbourne, Chicago,
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Oslo, or Bombay, men would eagerly cross half a continent
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to hear him. But the students of his own hospital, who had
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only the effort of shifting themselves out of the sofas in
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the common room, came ungracefully and ungratefully, and
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found it all rather boring."
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Gordon Ostlere, "Doctor in the House," 1952.
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