Grand Canary by A. J. Cronin Read Free Book Online Page B

Satisfied? That was no word. He was elated! He flung his pen into the air. He knew that he had won.
    The next day three early cases of cerebro-spinal fever were admitted to the hospital. It was for Harvey no mere coincidence but a logical concession from circumstance, the tacit pre-admission of his victory. At once he approached the hospital authorities and offered to exhibit his serum.
    His offer was curtly refused.
    Harvey was staggered. He did not know he had made enemies, that his careless dress, sardonic tongue, and arrogant disregard for etiquette had made him an object of antipathy and suspicion. Already the biting truth of his pathological reports had soured the temper of the diagnosticians and, like all who disdain the footsteps of their predecessors, he figured in the eyes of many as an upstart, a firebrand, a clever, but a dangerous fellow.
    But, though he was staggered, Harvey did not accept defeat. No, no; that was not Harvey.
    Instantly he launched a campaign. He approached individually the various members of the staff; produced the evidence of his experiments; he laboured painfully to convince those more favourably disposed to him of the value of his original work. Infuriated by the inertia of conservatism, by the whole muddling process of authority, he pressed his case urgently. The very bitterness of his air breathed conviction. There was humming and hawing; reference to the institution’s sane policy; talk of a general staff meeting. Meanwhile the three patients progressed with inexorable rapidity into the advanced stages of the disease.
    Then with suddenness and magnanimity the opposition weakened; it was decided with due gravity to permit the application of the new therapy; a sort of ponderous consent was conveyed – in writing – to Harvey. He leaped to the opportunity, rushed immediately to the ward.
    It was, of course, too late. He should have known it. The three patients, now six days in hospital and ten in the grip of their morbidity, were comatose, clearly moribund. And the circumstances, alas! were no pre-admission of Harvey’s victory, but a trap sprung by destiny in his face. On the one hand, an expectant and antipathetic audience awaiting with a sneer the consummation of the miracle; on the other, three subjects his calmer judgement would have instantly rejected as far beyond the aid of any human remedy.
    But he was not calm. Strung to an unimagined tensity, he could not allow to his opponents the gratification of seeing him withdraw.
    He had a desperate belief in his serum. And he had the fatal urge of eagerness. Grimly he accepted the responsibility, injecting massive doses directly into the cerebral ventricles of all three subjects. All that night he remained in the ward. Again and once again he repeated the dosage.
    Early next morning, within the compass of the same sad hour, the three patients died. They would have died in any case. It was inevitable. Yet it was a bad business for Harvey – though one from which his resilient spirit would inevitably have recovered. But there was worse to follow. A loose tongue wagged spitefully outside the hospital. News of the incident reached the newspapers, flared in a garbled form, and spread like wildfire through the popular Press. There was a terrific outcry levelled at the hospital and at Harvey. He gave no heed, meeting the biased clamour with quivering contempt. Unshaken, he saw now that he had intervened too late. To his cold and scientific mind the deaths of the three individuals represented no more than the termination of an inconclusive experiment. Because he desired no popular success, the flagrant uproar of the herd was to him as nothing.
    But to the hospital it was not as nothing. And the authorities, alas! gave heed.
    Pressed by the force of outside influence, the board met – a full meeting – in camera. The governor, like Pilate, washed his hands; the protests of the discerning few who believed in Harvey proved