Explore "The D'Arblay Mystery" by R. Austin Freeman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was near the close of my incumbency of Dr. Cornish's practice--indeed, Cornish had returned on the previous evening--that my unsatisfactory attendance on Mr. Simon Bendelow came to an end. It had been a wearisome affair. In medical practice, perhaps even more than in most human activities, continuous effort calls for the sustenance of achievement. A patient who cannot be cured or even substantially relieved is of all patients the most depressing. Week after week I had made my fruitless visits, had watched the silent, torpid sufferer grow yet more shrivelled and wasted, speculating even a little impatiently on the possible duration of his long-drawn-out passage to the grave. But at last the end came.
"Good morning, Mrs. Morris," I said as that grim female opened the door and surveyed me impassively, "and how is our patient to-day?"