“It sounds rather duller there,” said Hans Castorp.

“Capital. You ought to be a specialist. Well, that is a dullness, and such dullnesses are caused by the old places, where fibrosis has supervened. Scars, you know. You are an old patient, Castorp, but we won’t lay it up against anybody that you weren’t found out. The early diagnosis is very difficult⁠—particularly for my colleagues down below; I won’t say we have better ears⁠—though the regular practice does do something. But the air helps us, helps us hear, if you understand what I mean, this thin, dry air up here.”

“Certainly, of course,” Hans Castorp said.

“Very good, Castorp. And now listen, young man, to my words of wisdom. If that were all the trouble with you, if it was a case of nothing but the dullness and the scars on your bagpipe in there, I should send you back to your lares and penates and not trouble my head further about you. But as things stand, and according to what we find, and since you are already up here⁠—well, there is no use in your going down, for you’d only have to come up again.”