Great tales about doctor.., p.14
Great Tales About Doctors, page 14
She put Baglioni’s antidote to her lips; and, at the same moment, the figure of Rappaccini emerged from the portal and came slowly towards the marble fountain. As he drew near, the pale man of science seemed to gaze with a triumphant expression at the beautiful youth and maiden, as might an artist who should spend his life in achieving a picture or a group of statuary and finally be satisfied with his success. He paused; his bent form grew erect with conscious power; he spread out his hands over them in the attitude of a father imploring a blessing upon his children; but those were the same hands that had thrown poison into the stream of their lives. Giovanni trembled. Beatrice shuddered nervously, and pressed her hand upon her heart.
“My daughter,” said Rappaccini, “thou art no longer lonely in the world. Pluck one of those precious gems from thy sister shrub and bid thy bridegroom wear it in his bosom. It will not harm him now. My science and the sympathy between thee and him have so wrought within his system that he now stands apart from common men, as thou dost, daughter of my pride and triumph, from ordinary women. Pass on, then, through the world, most dear to one another and dreadful to all besides!”
“My father,” said Beatrice, feebly,—and still as she spoke she kept her hand upon her heart,—“wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom upon thy child?”
“Miserable!” exclaimed Rappaccini. “What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy—misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath—misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?”
“I would fain have been loved, not feared,” murmured Beatrice, sinking down upon the ground. “But now it matters not. I am going, father, where the evil which thou hast striven to mingle with my being will pass away like a dream—like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers, which will no longer taint my breath among the flowers of Eden. Farewell, Giovanni! Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart; but they, too, will fall away as I ascend. Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?”
To Beatrice,—so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon by Rappaccini’s skill,—as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote was death; and thus the poor victim of man’s ingenuity and of thwarted nature, and of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted wisdom, perished there, at the feet of her father and Giovanni. Just at that moment Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the thunderstricken man of science,— “Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is this the upshot of your experiment!”
THE PSYCHOPHONIC NURSE
David H. Keller, M.D.
After reading this story, one can only conclude that Dr. Keller (born in 1880 and as of spring, 1962, still enjoying life and writing neat hand-penned letters from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) had little use for either automation or successful businesswomen—at least when he wrote about them. Certainly he comes out powerfully against even successful robots (ialthough when he wrote about his synthetic nurse and his surrogate papa the term “robot” was as yet generally unknown to American readers, since it had been invented only five years previously), and much in favor of undiluted mother (and father) love. For that matter, we go along with him on both counts, up to a point at least, and we think you will, too!
The Psychophonic Nurse
“I’m mad! Just plain mad!” cried Susanna Teeple.
“Well, it can’t be helped now,” replied her husband. “I’m just as sorry as you are about it, but the baby is here now and some one has to take care of it.”
“I admit all that,” said Susanna. “I want her to be well cared for, but I have my work to do and now I have a real chance to make good money writing regularly for the Business Woman’s Advisor. I can easily make a thousand dollars a month if I can only find time to do the work. I simply can’t do my work and care for the baby. It was all a great mistake, having the baby now.”
“But I make enough to hire a nurse,” insisted Teeple. “Certainly, but where can I find one? The women who need the money are all working seven hours a day and all the good nurses are in hospitals. I have searched all over town and they just laugh when I start talking to them.”
“Take care of her yourself. Systematize the work. Budget your time, and make out a definite daily programme. Would you like me to employ an efficiency engineer? I have just had a man working along those lines in my factory. Bet he could help you a lot. Investigate the modern electrical machinery for taking care of the baby. Jot down your troubles and my inventor will start working on them.”
“You talk just like a man!” replied the woman in cold anger. “Your suggestions prove you have no idea whatever of the problem of caring for a three-weeks-old baby. I’ve used all the brains I have, and it takes me exactly seven hours a day. If the seven hours would all come in sequence, I could spare them, but during the last three days, since I’ve kept count, I’ve been interrupted from my writing exactly one hundred and ten times every twenty-four hours and only about five per cent of those interruptions could have been avoided. The baby has to be fed, changed, and washed and the bottles must be sterilized, the crib fixed, and the nursery cleaned, and just when I have her all right she regurgitates and then everything has to be done all over again. I just wish you had to take care of her for twenty-four hours, then you’d know more than you do now. I’ve tried some of those electrical machines you speak of: had them sent on approval, but they weren’t satisfactory. The vacuum evaporator clogged up with talcum powder and the curd extractor worked all right so long as it was over the mouth, but once the baby turned her head and the machine nearly pulled her ear off, before I found out why she was crying so. It would be wonderful if a baby could be cared for by machinery, but I’m afraid it will never be possible.”
“I believe it will,” said Teeple. “Of course, even if the machine worked perfectly, it couldn’t supply a mother’s love.”
“That idea of mother-love belongs to the dark ages,” sneered the disappointed woman. “We know now that a child doesn’t know what love is till it develops the ability to think. Women have been deceiving themselves. They believed their babies loved them because they wanted to think so. When my child is old enough to know what love is, I’ll be properly demonstrative—and not before. I’ve read very carefully what Hug-Hellmuth has written about the psychology of the baby and no child of mine is going to develop unhealthy complexes because I indulged in untimely love and unnecessary caresses.
I noticed that you’ve kissed it when you thought I wasn’t watching. How would you feel if, because of those kisses, your daughter developed an Oedipus complex when she reached maturity? I differ with you in regard to the machine; it will never be possible to care for a baby by machinery!”
“I believe it will!” insisted Teeple doggedly.
That evening he boarded the air-express for New York City. When he returned, after some days of absence, he was very uncommunicative in regard to the trip and what he had accomplished. Mrs. Teeple continued to take very good care of her baby, and also lost no opportunity of letting her husband realize what a sacrifice she was making for her family. Teeple continued to preserve a dignified silence. Then, about two weeks after his New York trip, he told his wife to go out for the afternoon. He would stay home and be nurse, just to see how it would go. After giving a thousand detailed instructions, Mrs. Teeple left.
On her return, she found her husband calmly reading in the library. Going to the nursery, she found the baby asleep and by the side of the crib she saw a fat, black woman, clad in the spotless uniform of a graduate nurse. She seemed as fast asleep as the child. Surprised, Mrs. Teeple went to her husband.
“Well, what does this mean?” she demanded.
“That, my dear, is our new nurse.”
“Where did you get her?”
“I bought her in New York. In fact, I had her made to order.”
“You what?” asked the astonished woman.
“I had her made to order by the Eastinghouse Electric Company. You see, she’s just a machine nurse, but as she doesn’t eat anything, is on duty twenty-four hours a day, and draws no salary, she’s cheap at the price I paid.”
“Are you insane, or am I?”
“Neither. Certainly not your husband. Let me show you how she works. She’s made of a combination of springs, levers, acoustic instruments, and by means of tubes such as are used in the radio, she’s very sensitive to sounds. She’s connected to the house current by a long, flexible cord, which supplies her with the necessary energy. To simplify matters, I had the orders put into numbers instead of sentences. One mean that the baby is to be fed; seven that she’s to be changed. Twelve that it’s time for a bath. I had a map made showing the exact position of the baby, the pile of clean diapers, the full bottles of milk, the clean sheets, in fact, everything needed to care for the baby during the twenty-four hours. In the morning, all you have to do is see that everything needed is in its place. At six o’clock you go into the nursery and say one in a loud, clear voice. The nurse reaches over to the row of bottles, picks up one and puts the nipple in the baby’s mouth. At the end of ten minutes it takes the empty bottle and puts it back in the row. At six-thirty, you say clearly and distinctly, seven. The nurse removes the wet diaper, takes a can of talcum, uses it, puts it back, takes a diaper, and pins it on the baby. Then she sits down.”
“I think you’re drunk!” said the woman, coolly.
“Not at all. You feel of her and see. She’s just a lot of rods and wires and machinery. I had her padded and made with a face because I thought she’d look more natural that way.” “Suppose all that you say is true. How can it help me? I have to see what the baby needs, then look through the book and see what number to say and then, I suppose, I have to stay and watch the old thing work. I wanted a chance to work at my books and this—why, it’s ridiculous!”
Teeple laughed.
“You’re a nice little woman, Susanna, but you certainly lack imagination. When I ordered this machine, I thought about all that and so I bought a phonograph with clock attachment. It will run for twenty-four hours without attention. Then I had a baby doctor work out a twenty-four hour programme of infant activity for different ages. Our baby is about two months old. You put this phonograph with the two-month record on it in the nursery. At six in the morning you see that all the supplies for that day are in the proper place; you see that the Psychophonic Nurse is in her proper place; the baby must also be in her proper place. Then you attach the current to the phonograph and the nurse and start the record. At definite periods of the twenty-four hours the phonograph will call out a number and the nurse will do what is necessary for that hour. It will feed the baby just so often and change it just so often and bathe it just so often. You start it at six and leave it alone till six the next morning.” “That sounds fine,” said the wife, sarcastically, “but suppose the baby gets wet between times? Suppose it starts to cry?”
“I thought of that, too. In every diaper there is a fine copper wire. When that becomes wet a delicate current is sent—you understand I mean an electrical current, not a watery one—to an amplifier and a certain sound is made, and the nurse will properly react to that sound. We have also provided for crying. When the baby does that, the nurse will pick the little one up and rock her to sleep.”
“But the books say that spoils the baby!”
“I know. I thought of that. But then, the poor little thing has to have some love and affection in her life and so I thought it wouldn’t harm it any to be rocked now and then. That was one reason why I had the padding made the way I did. I bet it will be mighty comfortable for the child. Then again, you know I had a black mammy and I wanted my child to have one, too.”
“Well,” said the woman, petulantly, “show me how the thing works. I’ve a lot of writing to do and unless I do it, they’ll hire some one else.”
After two hours of close observation, she had to admit that the nurse was just as capable of mechanically looking after the needs of a baby as she was. In fact, the cleverness of the performance made her gasp with astonishment. After each series of complicated acts, the machine went back to the chair and sat down.
The husband was triumphant.
“She does the work nicely,” he said. “Naturally, there’s no intelligence, but none is needed in the early months of childcare.”
The Psychophonic Nurse performed her duties in a way that would have been a credit to any woman. Of course there were times when things didn’t go as well as they should, but the fault was always with the human side of the arrangement and not the mechanical. Usually the mother was to blame because she didn’t put the supply of food or clothes in exactly the right place and once a new servant played havoc by cleaning the room and putting the nurse and the chair on the wrong side of the crib. Still, with a little supervision and care, things went very well indeed, and in a very short time the baby became accustomed to her black mammy and the mother was satisfied to spend a few minutes every morning arranging supplies and then leave the two alone for the rest of the day. Every two weeks a new record was placed in the phonograph, for it was determined that it was necessary to make a change in the program at least that often.
Mrs. Teeple, thoroughly happy with her new freedom, now devoted her entire time to literature. Her articles, which appeared in the Saturday issue of The Business Woman’s Advisor, were brilliant and aroused the most favorable comment from all parts of the world. An English firm asked her to write a book on Woman, the Conqueror, and so relieved was she of household worries, that at once she started to pound out the introduction on her noiseless, electrical typewriter. Once in a while she felt the need of exercise and would stroll around the house, and occasionally look into the nursery. Now and then she would pick the little one up. As the child grew older, this made her cry, so the mother decided that it was best not to interfere with the daily routine.
In spite of their efforts to conceal the activity of their new assistant, the news spread through the little town. The neighbors called, and while they had all kinds of excuses, there was no doubt about what it was they really wanted to see. Of course, opinions differed, and rather sharply. There were some of the older women who fearlessly denounced such conduct as unconditionally bad, but most of the women were secretly jealous and demanded that their husbands also buy a mechanical nursemaid.
The news spread beyond the confines of the town. Descriptions of a most interesting and erroneous nature began to appear in the newspapers. Finally, to avoid unscientific criticism, Mrs. Teeple wrote a full account of the way she was raising her child and sold it to the New York Comet, fully illustrated, for five thousand dollars. At once the Eastinghouse Electric Company was swamped with orders which they simply filed for future delivery. The entire machine was covered with patents and these were all the property of Teeple, who, for the time being, merely said that he wanted to make further studies before he would consider the sale of his rights.
For several months it seemed the discussion would never end. College debating teams selected as their subject, Shall the Child of the Future Be Raised by the Mother or by a Psychophonic Nurse? The leaders of the industrial world spent anxious evenings wondering whether such an invention would not simplify the labor problem. Very early in the social furor that was aroused, Henry Cecil, who had taken the place of Wells as an author of scientifiction, wrote a number of brilliant articles in which he showed a world where all the work was done by similar machines. Not only the work of nurses, but of mechanics, day laborers, and farmers could be done by machinery. He told of an age when mankind, relieved of the need to labor, could enter into a golden age of ease. The working day would be one hour long. Each mechanician would go to the factory, oil and adjust a dozen automamatons, see that they had the material for twenty-four hours production, and then turn on the electric current and leave them working till the next day.
Life, Henry Cecil said, would not only become easier, but also better in every way. Society, relieved of the necessity of paying labor, would be able to supply the luxuries of life to everyone. No more would women toil in the kitchen and men on the farm. The highest civilization could be attained because mankind would now have time and leisure to play.
And in his argument he showed that, while workmen in the huge assembling plants had largely become machines in their automatic activities, still they had accidents, sickness, and discontent, ending in troublesome strikes. These would all be avoided by mechanical workmen; of course, for a while there would have to be human supervision, but if it were possible to make a machine that would work, why not make one that would supervise the work of other machines? If one machine could use raw material, why couldn’t other machines be trained to distribute the supplies and carry away the finished product? Cecil foresaw the factory of the future running twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, furnishing everything necessary for the comfort of the human race. At once the ministers of the Gospel demanded a six-day week I for the machines, and a proper observance of the Sabbath.
Strange though it may seem, all this discussion seemed natural to the general public. For years they had been educated to use electrical apparatus in their homes. The scrubbing : and polishing of floors, washing of dishes, washing and ironing I of clothes, the sewing of clothes, grass cutting, cleaning of the | furniture, had all been done by electricity for many years. In every department of the world’s activity, the white servant, electricity, was in common use. In a little western town a baby was actually being cared for by a Psychophonic Nurse. If one baby, why not all babies? If a machine could do that work, why couldn’t machines be made to do all other kinds of work?
