Casualty 1909

[Mr Dean is speaking patronisingly to a patient while operating on him under a local anaesthetic]

Henry Percy Dean:
I chose to go on holiday to Lake Como because of Pliny the Younger. Have you read his letters?

Mr Hubnar:
[facetiously] I don't think he's got my address, Sir.

Henry Percy Dean:
[to the medical students who are watching] So as you can see, our patient, though untutored in the Latin of the Silver Age, is lucid and free of any pain.

[the hospital is at crisis point tending to the victims of a fire; Nurse Bennett is performing a needle thorocentesis because no doctor is free to do it]

Eva Luckes:
Nurse Bennett, what are you doing?

Ethel Bennett:
A needle thorocentesis - none of the doctors are available.

Eva Luckes:
Nurse Bennett, what do you think you are doing?

Ethel Bennett:
Sorry, Matron, what was the question?

[Dr Culpin rushes into the room]

Millais Culpin:
You did it! Good! Keep an eye on him - you may need to repeat.

Eva Luckes:
Nurse, your top button is undone!

Ethel Bennett:
Yes, Matron.

Millais Culpin:
Miss Luckes, in the midst of all this, does it honestly matter if a nurse's button has become undone?

Eva Luckes:
Yes, I think it matters very much, Doctor. It's a question of discipline. Nurse Bennett, would you come with me, please.

Millais Culpin:
Ethel, stay where you are!

Eva Luckes:
A doctor does not call a nurse by her christian name.

Millais Culpin:
[to Nurse Bennett] Stay where you are and attend to your patient.

Eva Luckes:
A nurse does not have a *patient*, doctor.

Millais Culpin:
You have my pity, Miss Luckes. All around you the flames of modernity are blazing as fiercely as the fire that tore through that slum. Yet there you stand trying to keep everything in its rightful bloody place, etiquette, buttons and all.

Eva Luckes:
Doctor Culpin, where did Nurse Bennett learn to do a needle thorocentesis. It's not in any of the nursing manuals.

Millais Culpin:
It is surely to her credit if she chooses to read widely.

Ethel Bennett:
[whispers urgently] Doctor Culpin!

Eva Luckes:
Not if it interferes with her *true* vocation.

Millais Culpin:
In any other London hospital she could train to be a doctor.

Eva Luckes:
Well this hospital believes that the profession is not suitable for women.

Millais Culpin:
Meaning *you* are not suited to the profession. How dare you? How dare you impose your own limitations onto the aspirations of others? I don't doubt for one second you're a great force for good, Miss Luckes, but progress - not at all!

Eva Luckes:
Progress is not always for the best.

Millais Culpin:
That rather depends on how far ahead one chooses to look.