lerated from other than "Sir John"--for,
as was said by an inspired American: "He who dares to see a truth not
recognized in creed must die the death." And now indeed is revealed the
wisdom of Shakespeare when he said: "Ignorance is the Curse of God;" or
of Bolinbroke's bitter assertion: "Plain truth will influence half a
score men at most in a nation or an age, while _mystery will lead
millions by the nose_."

I am not prepared to endorse the cynical saying of Voltaire: "Regimen is
superior to medicine--especially as from time immemorial out of every
hundred physicians ninety-eight are charlatans." But this much is
certain, that they have found the needs of nature too laborious--the
pathway of their leader--the Great Hippocrates--of Galen, Sydenham,
Boerhaave, too tame, and have listened to the lure of Paracelsus, and
adopted, with its high pontificial manner and medication, the more
luxurious empiricism of the medicasters of five centuries ago.

But the time has come when the reign of bigotry, drugs and mystery must
have an end--the chartered lien on human life must cease and the antique
secret consistories so long omnipotent, must be brought to the
enlightened level of the day.

We have come to the parting of the ways, where it becomes the bounden
duty of every earnest, fair-minded physician to cast off the manacles of
professional caste and secret obligation and to advance with open mind
across the wholesome confines of eternal truth. This as much in their
own interest as in that of their patients. For there is disaffection in
the once solid phalanx, and we find strictures such as these in the
standard works of the profession: "It cannot be denied that
practitioners in medicine stand too low in the scale of public
estimation and, something is rotten in the State of Denmark."

A series of articles appearing recently, in the English Review, from
the daring and masterly pen of George Bernard Shaw, deals with the
subject with an ungloved hand, taking as opportunity a vitriolic
controversy recently raging between exalted lights of the medical
profession in London, which raises abruptly the long-drawn curtain of
mystery and exposes the secret skeleton to the view of a wondering
world. Speaking of the absolute, autocratic powers of the medical
monopoly and the superstitious, hopeless complacency of the public, the
writer says: "The assumption is that the 'registered doctor' or surgeon
knows everything that is known, an