“…when you come down to brass tacks a bacteriologist is no great shakes.”

As a bacteriologist, I’m offended.

But perhaps Somerset Maugham—who studied medicine at St. Thomas Hospital in London, and certainly would have got a mouthful of bacteriology while he was there—suffered some slight about his professional background at the hands of an officious Colonial Office dandy when he was in China and then worked that encounter into The Painted Veil. 

Maybe I should reread Arrowsmith… about the bacteriologist, not the rock band.