Medicine: Behind the Screen

The Lancet is an excellent weekly medical journal; but it is British. Its lucid medical articles delight U. S. medicos; its self-consciously lighter vein also delights them. Every week since the war began the Lancet has devoted a pasture-page to “our peripatetic correspondents,” for gripes, wisecracks, sentimental reflections. Last week a peripatetic correspondent sounded off on British medical society dinners:

“During and after such dinners you must provide speeches or music. The more frugal-minded societies provide music. They can get quite a good soprano for two or three guineas plus her dinner which she eats behind a screen or in the next room (because of the stories); but if she is old and ugly your diners moodily finger their wine glasses and murmur ‘Hell,’ and if she is young and charming they are continually popping behind the screen to see if she’s got everything she wants. In either case it’s all rather distracting and a speechmaker is well worth the little extra.”