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Show -61- Chapter Five The Professor's physical examination took place in a hospital in the city. He had been warned that it was a long, impersonal procedure, a treadmill of tests designed to peer into the working of all parts of the body. Most of the Professor's organs had been examined at one time or another in his lifetime, and no doctor had found anything wrong with him ex-; cept the tendency of his lungs to harbor pneuomocci infection. He did not expect the examiners to find anything wrong today. He was prepared to be told, as he often had been, that he smoked too much, that he should cut down on his drinking, and that he was about twenty pounds overweight. He was told none of these things. The examination was. too machine-like to allow such advice. He was taken in tow by a middle-aged Mexican woman, who wore a white nurse's costume, but was obviously not a trained nurse. She sat him down at the end of a long table. "You do these things," she said, pointing to a gray box on the table lop, one of many similar boxes that were strung along the table. The gray boxes were filled with thick cards that demanded answers to all kinds of questions about the Professor's past. At first they were simple questions about the childhood diseases he had had. Then they asked more complex questions about |
