the Central
Pharmacy.

He was interrupted by a voice behind him. "By God!" cried Bindon; "I'll
have her yet."

The physician stared over his shoulder at Bindon's expression, and then
altered the prescription.

So soon as this painful interview was over, Bindon gave way to rage. He
settled that the medical man was not only an unsympathetic brute and
wanting in the first beginnings of a gentleman, but also highly
incompetent; and he went off to four other practitioners in succession,
with a view to the establishment of this intuition. But to guard against
surprises he kept that little prescription in his pocket. With each he
began by expressing his grave doubts of the first doctor's intelligence,
honesty and professional knowledge, and then stated his symptoms,
suppressing only a few more material facts in each case. These were
always subsequently elicited by the doctor. In spite of the welcome
depreciation of another practitioner, none of these eminent specialists
would give Bindon any hope of eluding the anguish and helplessness that
loomed now close upon him. To the last of them he unburthened his mind
of an accumulated disgust with medical science. "After centuries and
centuries," he exclaimed hotly; "and you can do nothing--except admit
your helplessness. I say, 'save me'--and what do you do?"

"No doubt it's hard on you," said the doctor. "But you should have taken
precautions."

"How was I to know?"

"It wasn't our place to run after you," said the medical man, picking a
thread of cotton from his purple sleeve. "Why should we save _you_ in
particular? You see--from one point of view--people with imaginations
and passions like yours have to go--they have to go."

"Go?"

"Die out. It's an eddy."

He was a young man with a serene face. He smiled at Bindon. "We get on
with research, you know; we give advice when people have the sense to
ask for it. And we bide our time."

"Bide your time?"

"We hardly know enough yet to take over the management, you know."

"The management?"

"You needn't be anxious. Science is young yet. It's got to keep on
growing for a few generations. We know enough now to know we don't know
enough yet.... But the time is coming, all the same. _You_ won't see the
time. But, between ourselves, you rich men and party bosses, with your
natural play of the passions and patriotism and religion and so forth,
have made rather a mess of things; haven't you? These Underways! And all
that