Read "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A hundred interruptions took Martin out of his laboratory. He was summoned into the reception room of the department to explain to angry citizens why the garage next door to them should smell of gasoline; he went back to his cubbyhole to dictate letters to school-principals about dental clinics; he drove out to Swede Hollow to see what attention the food and dairy inspector had given to the slaughterhouses; he ordered a family in Shantytown quarantined; and escaped at last into the laboratory.
It was well lighted, convenient, well stocked. Martin had little time for anything but cultures, blood-tests, and Wassermanns for the private physicians of the city, but the work rested him, and now and then he struggled over a precipitation test which was going to replace Wassermanns and make him famous.