Hypocrite's Isle

Начало книги

A ripple of polite applause gave way to the sound of shuffling feet on tiered, wooden flooring as the audience moved down to the exit doors on either side of the Lister Medical Lecture Theatre. The theatre was located in the oldest part of the hospital, with portraits of medical men of note in its two-hundred-year history gazing down from the walls — included among them the eponymous Joseph Lister, who had been a surgeon at the hospital and who had gone on to pioneer the use of antisepsis. None of them smiled, as befitted a profession not noted for taking itself anything less than seriously.

There were other, more modern lecture rooms in the hospital and adjacent medical school buildings — and all equipped with the latest in audio-visual equipment — but it was traditional that visiting lecturers be invited to use the Lister, and the idea of walking in the footsteps of the great proved seductive to most.

Читать дальше →