one o'clock
And let me get to work ! '' At eleven o'clock , absolutely calm , absolutely cool , -- pure as a girl in his fresh , white operating clothes -- cleaner , -- skin , hair , teeth , hands , -- than any girl who ever walked the face of the earth , in a white tiled room as surgically clean as himself , with three or four small , glistening instruments still boiling , steaming hot -- and half a dozen breathless assistants almost as immaculate as himself , with his gown , cap and mask adjusted , his gloves finally on , and the faintest possible little grin twitching oddly at the corner of his mouth , he `` went in '' as they say , to a new born baby 's tortured , twisted spine -- and took out -- fifty years perhaps of hunched-back pain and shame and morbid passions flourishing banefully in the dark shades of a disordered life . At half-past twelve he did an appendix operation on the only son of his best friend . At one o'clock he did another appendix operation . Whom it was on did n't matter . It could n't have been worse on -- any one . At half-past one no one remembered to feed him .