The expectation of Sir Richmond’s expression changed to disappointment.  “But that’s not reasonable,” he cried.  “That’s not reasonable.  That’s superstition.  Call a thing a drug and condemn it!  Everything is a drug.  Everything that affects you.  Food stimulates or tranquillizes.  Drink.  Noise is a stimulant and quiet an opiate.  What is life but response to stimulants?  Or reaction after them?  When I’m exhausted I want food.  When I’m overactive and sleepless I want tranquillizing.  When I’m dispersed I want pulling together.”

“But we don’t know how to use drugs,” the doctor objected.

“But you ought to know.”

Dr. Martineau fixed his eye on a first floor window sill on the opposite side of Harley Street.  His manner suggested a lecturer holding on to his theme.

“A day will come when we shall be able to manipulate drugs—­all sorts of drugs—­and work them in to our general way of living.  I have no prejudice against them at all.  A time will come when we shall correct our moods, get down to our reserves of energy by their help, suspend fatigue, put off sleep during long spells of exertion.  At some sudden crisis for example.  When we shall know enough to know just how far to go with this, that or the other stuff.  And how to wash out its after effects....  I quite agree with you,—­in principle....  But that time hasn’t come yet....  Decades of research yet....  If we tried that sort of thing now, we should be like children playing with poisons and explosives....  It’s out of the question.”

“I’ve been taking a few little things already.  Easton Syrup for example.”

“Strychnine.  It carries you for a time and drops you by the way.  Has it done you any good—­any Nett good?  It has—­I can see—­broken your sleep.”

The doctor turned round again to his patient and looked up into his troubled face.

“Given physiological trouble I don’t mind resorting to a drug.  Given structural injury I don’t mind surgery.  But except for any little mischief your amateur drugging may have done you do not seem to me to be either sick or injured.  You’ve no trouble either of structure or material.  You are—­worried—­ill in your mind, and otherwise perfectly sound.  It’s the current of your thoughts, fermenting.  If the trouble is in the mental sphere, why go out of the mental sphere for a treatment?  Talk and thought; these are your remedies.  Cool deliberate thought.  You’re unravelled.  You say it yourself.  Drugs will only make this or that unravelled strand behave disproportionately.  You don’t want that.  You want to take stock of yourself as a whole—­find out where you stand.

“But the Fuel Commission?”

“Is it sitting now?”

“Adjourned till after Whitsuntide.  But there’s heaps of work to be done.

“Still,” he added, “this is my one chance of any treatment.”

The doctor made a little calculation.  “Three weeks....  It’s scarcely time enough to begin.”