air of someone who had seen something of great amazement but
yet lacked the means to put it into language. As I got to know the patient over the next few
weeks I learned that this was not for the want of effort.
In his youth he had dabbled with the world-speak
language Volapük, one designed to do away with the
incompatibility of tongues, to establish a standard in
which scientific intercourse might be conducted with
maximum efficiency and with minimal friction in
movement between minds, laboratories and p
her
means to do so when reality resisted these early
measures.
The dabbling, he reflected, had become a little more than
that. He had subscribed to journals in the language, he
wrote letters to colleagues and received them in return. A
few words of world-speak remained readily on his tongue, words that he spat out regularly
into the yellow-wallpapered lounge of the sanatorium with a disgust that was lugubriously
palpable.
According to my records, and in piecing together the notes of previous doctors, there