Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [170]
He returned to his evening studying. He went from mathematics into physical chemistry; began to understand the mass action law; became as sarcastic as Terry about what he called the “bedside manner” of Tubbs and Holabird; read much French and German; went canoeing on the Hudson on Sunday afternoons; and had a bawdy party with Leora and Terry to celebrate the day when the Institute was purified by the sale of Holabird’s pride, Gladys the Centrifuge.
He suspected that Dr. Tubbs, now magnificent with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, had retained him in the Institute only because of Gottlieb’s intervention. But it may be that Tubbs and Holabird hoped he would again blunder into publicity-bringing miracles, for they were both polite to him at lunch — polite and wistfully rebuking, and full of meaty remarks about publishing one’s discoveries early instead of dawdling.
It was more than a year after Martin’s anticipation by D’Herelle when Tubbs appeared in the laboratory with suggestions:
“I’ve been thinking, Arrowsmith,” said Tubbs.
He looked it.
“D’Herelle’s discovery hasn’t aroused the popular interest I thought it would. If he’d only been here with us, I’d have seen to it that he got the proper attention. Practically no newspaper comment at all. Perhaps we can still do something. As I understand it, you’ve been going along with what Dr. Gottlieb would call ‘fundamental research.’ I think it may now be time for you to use phage in practical healing. I want you to experiment with phage in pneumonia, plague, perhaps typhoid, and when your experiments get going, make some practical tests in collaboration with the hospitals. Enough of all this mere frittering and vanity. Let’s really CURE somebody!”
Martin was not free from a fear of dismissal if he refused to obey. And he was touched as Tubbs went on:
“Arrowsmith, I suspect you sometimes feel I lack a sense of scientific precision when I insist on practical results. I— Somehow I don’t see the really noble and transforming results coming out of this Institute that we ought to be getting, with our facilities. I’d like to do something big, my boy, something fine for poor humanity, before I pass on. Can’t you give it to me? Go cure the plague!”
For once Tubbs was a tired smile and not an earnestness of whiskers.
That day, concealing from Gottlieb his abandonment of the quest for the fundamental nature of phage, Martin set about fighting pneumonia, before attacking the Black Death. And when Gottiieb learned of it, he was absorbed in certain troubles of his own.
Martin cured rabbits of pleuro-pneumonia by the injection of phage, and by feeding them with it he prevented the spread of pneumonia. He found that phage-produced immunity could be as infectious as a disease.
He was pleased with himself, and expected pleasure from Tubbs, but for weeks Tubbs did not heed him. He was off on a new enthusiasm, the most virulent of his whole life: he was organizing the League of Cultural Agencies.
He was going to standardize and co-ordinate all mental activities in America, by the creation of a bureau which should direct and pat and gently rebuke and generally encourage chemistry and batik-making, poetry and Arctic exploration, animal husbandry and Bible study, Negro spirituals and business-letter writing. He was suddenly in conference with conductors of symphony orchestras, directors of art-schools, owners of itinerant Chautauquas, liberal governors, ex-clergymen who wrote tasty philosophy for newspaper syndicates, in fact all the proprietors of American intellectuality — particularly including a millionaire named Minnigen who had recently been elevating the artistic standards of the motion pictures.
Tubbs was all over the Institute inviting the researchers to join him in the League of Cultural Agencies with its fascinating committee-meetings and dinners. Most of them grunted, “The Old Man is erupting again,” and forgot him, but one ex-major went