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Benway is operating in an auditorium filled with students: "Now, boys, you won't see this operation performed very often and there's a reason for that.... You see it has absolutely no medical value. No one knows what the purpose of it originally was or if it had a purpose at all. Personally I think it was a pure artistic creation from the beginning. "Just as a bull fighter with his skill and knowledge extricates himself from danger he has himself invoked, so in this operation the surgeon deliberately endangers his patient, and then, with incredible speed and celer- ity, rescues him from death at the last possible split second.... Did any of you ever see Dr. Tetrazzini per- form? I say perform advisedly because his operations were performances. He would start by throwing a scal- pel across the room into the patient and then make his entrance like a ballet dancer. His speed was incredible: 'I don't give them time to die,' he would say. Tumors put him in a frenzy of rage. 'Fucking undisciplined cells!' he would snarl, advancing on the tumor like a knife-fighter." A young man leaps down into the operating theatre and, whipping out a scalpel, advances on the patient. DR. BENWAY: "An espontaneo Stop him before he guts my patient!" (Espontaneo is a bull-fighting term for a member of the audience who leaps down into the ring, pulls out a concealed cape and attempts a few passes with the bull before he is dragged out of the ring. ) The orderlies scuffle with the espontaneo, who is finally ejected from the hall. The anesthetist takes ad- vantage of the confusion to pry a large gold filling from the patient's mouth.... I am passing room 10 they moved me out of yester- day.... Maternity case I assume... Bedpans full of blood and Kotex and nameless female substances, enough to pollute a continent... If someone comes to visit me in my old room he will think I gave birth to a monster and the State Department is trying to hush it up.... Music from I Am an American... An elderly man in the striped pants and cutaway of a diplomat stands on a platform draped with the American flag. A de- cayed, corseted tenor -- bursting out of a Daniel Boone costume -- is singing the Star S pangled Banner, accom- panied by a full orchestra. |
