North to the South, to some baths or other. Science is of such
a nature, that every rural physic-man laments because there are no means
of curing working-men, because he is so poor that he has not the means to
place the sick man in the proper hygienic conditions; and at the same
time this physician complains that there are no hospitals, and that he
cannot get through with his work, that he needs assistants, more doctors
and practitioners.
What is the inference? This: that the people's principal lack, from
which diseases arise, and spread abroad, and refuse to be healed, is the
lack of means of subsistence. And here Science, under the banner of the
division of labor, summons her warriors to the aid of the people. Science
is entirely arranged for the wealthy classes, and it has adopted for its
task the healing of the people who can obtain every thing for themselves;
and it attempts to heal those who possess no superfluity, by the same
means.
But there are no means, and therefore it is necessary to take them from
the people who are ailing, and pest-stricken, and who cannot recover for
lack of means. And now the defenders of medicine for the people say that
this matter has been, as yet, but little developed. Evidently it has
been but little developed, because if (which God forbid!) it had been
developed, and that through oppressing the people,--instead of two
doctors, midwives, and practitioners in a district, twenty would have
settled down, since they desire this, and half the people would have died
through the difficulty of supporting this medical staff, and soon there
would be no one to heal.
Scientific co-operation with the people, of which the defenders of
science talk, must be something quite different. And this co-operation
which should exist has not yet begun. It will begin when the man of
science, technologist or physician, will not consider it legal to take
from people--I will not say a hundred thousand, but even a modest ten
thousand, or five hundred rubles for assisting them; but when he will
live among the toiling people, under the same conditions, and exactly as
they do, then he will be able to apply his knowledge to the questions of
mechanics, technics, hygiene, and the healing of the laboring people. But
now science, supporting itself at the expense of the working-people, has
entirely forgotten the conditions of life among these people, ignores (as
it puts it) these conditions, and takes very g
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