did not seem to help him any. Even if they had been
blindfolded others would still have felt his presence. A civit-cat
suffers from the same drawbacks in a social way, but the advantage to
the civit-cat is that as a general thing it associates only with other
civit-cats.

Except in the country the old-time, catch-as-catch-can general
practitioner appears to be dying out. In the city one finds him
occasionally, playing a limit game in an office on a back street--two
dollars to come in, five to call; but the tendency of the day is toward
specialists. Hence the expert who treats you for just one particular
thing With a pain in your chest, say, you go to a chest specialist. So
long as he can keep the trouble confined to your chest, all well and
good. If it slips down or slides up he tries to coax it back to the
reservation. If it refuses to do so, he bids it an affectionate adieu,
makes a dotted mark on you to show where he left off, collects his
bill and regretfully turns you over to a stomach specialist or a throat
specialist, depending on the direction in which the trouble was headed
when last seen.

Or, perhaps the specialist to whom you take your custom is an advocate
of an immediate operation for such cases as yours and all others. I
may be unduly sensitive on account of having recently emerged from the
surgeon's hands, but it strikes me now that there are an awful lot of
doctors who take one brief glance at a person who is complaining, and
say to themselves that here is something that ought to be looked into
right away--and immediately open a bag and start picking out the proper
utensils. You go into a doctor's office and tell him you do not feel
the best in the world--and he gives you a look and excuses himself, and
steps into the next room and begins greasing a saw.

Mind you, in these casual observations as compiled by me while bedfast
and here given utterance, I am not seeking to disparage possibly the
noblest of professions. Lately I have owed much to it. I am strictly on
the doctor's side. He is with us when we come into the world and with
us when we go out of it, oftentimes lending a helping hand on both
occasions. Anyway, our sympathies should especially go out to the
medical profession at this particular time when the anti-vivisectionists
are railing so loudly against the doctors. The anti-vivisection crusade
has enlisted widely different classes in the community, including many
lovers of our dumb-animal