Yes, the good, the patient, the upright Joachim, so affected to discipline and the service, had been attacked by fits of rebellion, he even questioned the authority of the “Gaffky scale”: the method employed in the laboratory⁠—the lab, as one called it⁠—to ascertain the degree of a patient’s infection. Whether only a few isolated bacilli, or a whole host of them, were found in the sputum analysed, determined his “Gaffky number,” upon which everything depended. It infallibly reflected the chances of recovery with which the patient had to reckon; the number of months or years he must still remain could with ease be deduced from it, beginning with the six months that Hofrat Behrens called a “weekend,” and ending with the “life sentence,” which, taken literally, often enough meant very little indeed. Joachim, then, inveighed against the Gaffky scale, openly giving notice that he questioned its authority⁠—or perhaps not

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