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 decision with a bribe of a large sum of money and a
virtual guarantee that if he makes a mistake it can never be proved
against him, is to go wildly beyond the ascertained strain which human
nature will bear. It is simply unscientific to allege or believe
that doctors do not under existing circumstances perform unnecessary
operations and manufacture and prolong lucrative illnesses. The only
ones who can claim to be above suspicion are those who are so much
sought after that their cured patients are immediately replaced by fresh
ones. And there is this curious psychological fact to be remembered: a
serious illness or a death advertizes the doctor exactly as a hanging
advertizes the barrister who defended the person hanged. Suppose, for
example, a royal personage gets something wrong with his throat, or has
a pain in his inside. If a doctor effects some trumpery cure with a wet
compress or a peppermint lozenge nobody takes the least notice of him.
But if he operates on the throat and kills the patient, or extirpates
an internal organ and keeps the whole nation palpitating for days whilst
the patient hovers in pain and fever between life and death, his fortune
is made: every rich man who omits to call him in when the same symptoms
appear in his household is held not to have done his utmost duty to
the patient. The wonder is that there is a king or queen left alive in
Europe.