Instead of shuddering at the flesh, I reverenced the spirit that rises up and fights this unknown terror, fights it with the knife and with the test tube and with the X-ray, and goes on fighting, goes on hoping. Have you ever in a storm at sea thrilled to the driving, thrusting strength and balance of a great ship riding the tempest? If so, you will know how I felt in this hospital that steers its course through an ocean of suffering. "This is the laboratory!" A man in white overalls was bending over a microscope. Another man in white was examining the changing colour in a test tube. The rigid set of their shoulders denoted utter concentration. Round them lay hundreds of glass globes, bottles, ghastly exhibits from which I swiftly turned away. Day in and day out, year after year, the research department of this hospital searches into the mysteries of cancer. In one part of the building doctors try to cure or alleviate the disease; in another scientists work with their minds on that day when it may be possible to prevent it. Is there a more splendid room in London? * * * The chronic ward! Through glass doors I saw in one men, in another women. They were away from the other patients in whom the disease has been caught in time. I tried not to look at the seared faces; I turned from the broken lives with a soreness at my heart. Some of them have been there for years, some are there for life. Over many of them was a strange, still peace which made me see, but I may be wrong, a nurse hurrying down those calm corridors with a merciful hypodermic syringe in her hand. * * * Visiting day! Can you imagine the quiet heroism of it? The wife who comes to see the husband who has been taken away from her, the husband who creeps in towards a bed in which, so small and girlish and white, she lies waiting for him? The flowers, the little cheerfulnesses, and, behind it all, the doubt, the wondering, the ache, the sense of injustice. "Well, you'll soon be well and home again, dear." "Yes! And how's old Johnny? How I'd love to see that dog again!" Then anxiously, swiftly in reply: "But you will, you old silly, you _will_!" "Yes, of course, perhaps I will." "Good-bye!" "Oh, come back, my dear. Just once more! How lovely your hair smells...." Can you imagine how often the most cheerful visitor crumples up when the weary eyes from the bed cannot see beyond the closed door? * * * Who is Dr. William Marsden?