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brought from St. Luke’s where he had been a student, and
had used all his life; he found them just as efficacious as any-
thing that had come into fashion since. Philip was startled
at Doctor South’s suspicion of asepsis; he had accepted it in
deference to universal opinion; but he used the precautions
which Philip had known insisted upon so scrupulously at
the hospital with the disdainful tolerance of a man playing
at soldiers with children.
‘I’ve seen antiseptics come along and sweep everything
before them, and then I’ve seen asepsis take their place.
Bunkum!’
The young men who were sent down to him knew only
hospital practice; and they came with the unconcealed scorn
for the General Practitioner which they had absorbed in the
air at the hospital; but they had seen only the complicated
cases which appeared in the wards; they knew how to treat
an obscure disease of the suprarenal bodies, but were help-
less when consulted for a cold in the head. Their knowledge
was theoretical and their self-assurance unbounded. Doctor
South watched them with tightened lips; he took a savage
pleasure in showing them how great was their ignorance
and how unjustified their conceit. It was a poor practice, of
fishing folk, and the doctor made up his own prescriptions.
Doctor South asked his assistant how he expected to make
both ends meet if he gave a fisherman with a stomach-ache
a mixture consisting of half a dozen expensive drugs. He
complained too that the young medical men were unedu-
cated: their reading consisted of The Sporting Times and
The British Medical Journal; they could neither write a leg-

Of Human Bondage