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From SCIFIPEDIA
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"The Little Black Bag" is a short story by C.M. Kornbluth, about a down-on-his-luck doctor, who revives his medical career after receiving a medical bag from the future. The story was first printed in the July, 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.
Plot
About 20 generations into the future, Dr. Hemingway is having a conversation with his physicist friend, Dr. Gillis. Demonstrating a new time machine, Gillis grabs Hemingways black medical bag, puts it in the machine, and watches it disappear.
In the 1940’s, Dr. Full is a disgraced quack, a doctor who charged patients for phony cures, and who is now an alcoholic. Hungover in his apartment one night, he is surprised to see a black bag appear out of nowhere. He finds inside the bag many futuristic medical instruments, miracle cures, and diagnostic machines. He treats and cures a child who lives in his apartment building (the child is from a new immigrant family, so they don’t yet know enough to call a better doctor). But the child's older sister, Teresa, figures out what Dr. Full is doing, and moves in on Dr. Full’s new scam by threatening to go to the police. Dr. Full opens up a clinic, with Teresa as his assistant, and cures many people using the futuristic medical bag, but he manages to keep a low enough profile as not to attract undue attention. Teresa brings in a middle aged rich woman for some plastic surgery; and Dr. Full reluctantly agrees, performing the surgery using a scalpel from the bag which has an advanced safety function. Later that day, Dr. Full tells Teresa that he plans to give the bag to humanity, believing that this could be his redemption. Furious, Teresa grabs a scalpel from the bag and kills Dr. Full; she then uses another device from the bag to disintegrate his body. The next day, when the same middle aged woman comes in for another plastic surgery treatment, Teresa decides to do the procedure herself. But the woman is nervous without the Doctor there, and so Teresa must demonstrate how the scalpel works by using it on herself. It is a very advanced scalpel, which cuts only as deep as is necessary, without harming the patient. But....
In the future, Dr. Hemingway’s (the black bag’s original owner) boss had been unconcerned when the bag’s loss was reported. But now, his machines are telling him that the bag has been used in a homicide. He now feels he has no choice but to remotely deactivate the bag and all of its instruments.
....the scalpel’s safety function is deactivate just as Teresa is demonstrating it on her own neck. Teresa slits her own throat and dies.
Additional Notes
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
