ere is no calculation that an engineer can make as to the behavior
of a girder under a strain, or an astronomer as to the recurrence of a
comet, more certain than the calculation that under such circumstances
we shall be dismembered unnecessarily in all directions by surgeons
who believe the operations to be necessary solely because they want to
perform them. The process metaphorically called bleeding the rich man
is performed not only metaphorically but literally every day by surgeons
who are quite as honest as most of us. After all, what harm is there
in it? The surgeon need not take off the rich man's (or woman's) leg or
arm: he can remove the appendix or the uvula, and leave the patient none
the worse after a fortnight or so in bed, whilst the nurse, the general
practitioner, the apothecary, and the surgeon will be the better.

DOUBTFUL CHARACTER BORNE BY THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

Again I hear the voices indignantly muttering old phrases about the
high character of a noble profession and the honor and conscience of
its members. I must reply that the medical profession has not a
high character: it has an infamous character. I do not know a single
thoughtful and well-informed person who does not feel that the tragedy
of illness at present is that it delivers you helplessly into the hands
of a profession which you deeply mistrust, because it not only advocates
and practises the most revolting cruelties in the pursuit of knowledge,
and justifies them on grounds which would equally justify practising the
same cruelties on yourself or your children, or burning down London to
test a patent fire extinguisher, but, when it has shocked the public,
tries to reassure it with lies of breath-bereaving brazenness. That
is the character the medical profession has got just now. It may be
deserved or it may not: there it is at all events, and the doctors who
have not realized this are living in a fool's paradise. As to the humor
and conscience of doctors, they have as much as any other class of men,
no more and no less. And what other men dare pretend to be impartial
where they have a strong pecuniary interest on one side? Nobody supposes
that doctors are less virtuous than judges; but a judge whose salary
and reputation depended on whether the verdict was for plaintiff or
defendant, prosecutor or prisoner, would be as little trusted as a
general in the pay of the enemy. To offer me a doctor as my judge, and
then weight his decis