Ernest Hemingway

“ When "Geo rge" comes in on the soiled, bloody stretcher and the rags are stripped off and his naked, broken body lies on the white table in the glare of the surgeon's light, and he dangles on a little thread of life, while the physicians struggle grimly, it is all in the night's work, whether the thread snaps or whether it holds so that George can fight on and work and play.
Here comes another case. This time a small man limps in, supported by an ambulance man and a big policeman in uniform. ”

“ The ambulance b rought him from a wine room, dead from a stroke of heart disease. At another time (it happens quite often) a young girl took poison. The physicians who saved her life seldom speak of the case. It she had died her story might have been told -- but she has to live.
And so the work goes on. For one man it means a clean bed and prescriptions with whisky in it, possibly, and for another, it is a place in the potters' field. The skill of the surgeon is exercised just the same, no matter what the cause of the injury or t he deserts of the patient. ”

“ Out on Twenty-seventh street a drug clerk -- the one of the three who used the .38 -- has a .38 bullet dangling from his watch chain.
* * One night they brought in a negro who had been cut with a razor. It is not a mere joke about negroes using the razor -- they really do it. The lower end of the man's heart had been cut away and there was not much hope for him. ”