Scene in an operating room over a hundred years ago:
'Puffer Billy' was properly a steam locomotive.
" Two young men lounged in front of this,
one threading needles, the other doing something to a
brass coffee-pot-like thing which hissed out puffs of
steam.

"That's Peterson," whispered the senior, "the
big, bald man in the front row. He's the skin-
grafting man, you know. And that's Anthony Browne,
who took a larynx out successfully last winter. And
there's Murphy, the pathologist, and Stoddart, the
eye-man. You'll come to know them all soon."

"Who are the two men at the table?"

"Nobody--dressers. One has charge of the
instruments and the other of the puffing Billy. It's
Lister's antiseptic spray, you know, and Archer's one
of the carbolic-acid men. Hayes is the leader of the
cleanliness-and-cold-water school, and they all hate
each other like poison."