16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
numbers so great and indiscriminately heaped
upon one another, that they would never have
left your parson there.'
Geary and Maturin had studied medicine together:
they had shared a skeleton and several
unclaimed victims of the Liffey or the
Seine. Now, as they sat in the shade, drinking
coffee, they spoke with the uninhibited directness
of medical men. 'My patient,' said
Stephen, 'is also my assistant. He was as devoted
to natural philosophy as you, particularly
to birds, and although he had followed
no regular course, attended no lectures,
walked no wards, he became a useful surgeon's
mate by constant attendance in the
sick-berth and frequent dissection; and since
he was a well-read, cultivated man, he was
also an agreeable companion. Unhappily, he
recently came to suspect that he had contracted
a venereal disease, and when during