I presume nobody will question the existence of widely spread popular
delusion that every doctor is a titan of science. It is escaped only in
the very small class which understands by science something more than
conjuring with retorts and spirit lamps, magnets and microscopes, and
discovering magical cures for disease. To a sufficiently ignorant man
every captain of a trading schooner is a Galileo, every organ-grinder
a Beethoven, every piano-tuner a Hemholtz, every Old Bailey barrister
a Solon, every Seven Dials pigeon dealer a Darwin, every scrivener a
Shakespear, every locomotive engine a miracle, and its driver no less
wonderful than George Stephenson. As a matter of fact, the rank and file
of doctors are no more scientific than their tailors; or, if you prefer
to put it the reverse way, their tailors are no less scientific than
they. Doctoring is an art, not a science: any layman who is interested
in science sufficiently to take in one of the scientific journals and
follow the literature of the scientific movement, knows more about it
than those doctors (probably a large majority) who are not interested in
it, and practise only to earn their bread. Doctoring is not even the art
of keeping people in health (no doctor seems able to advise you what to
eat any better than his grandmother or the nearest quack): it is the
art of curing illnesses. It does happen exceptionally that a practising
doctor makes a contribution to science (my play describes a very notable
one); but it happens much oftener that he draws disastrous conclusions
from his clinical experience because he has no conception of scientific
method, and believes, like any rustic, that the handling of evidence and
statistics needs no expertness. The distinction between a quack doctor
and a qualified one is mainly that only the qualified one is authorized
to sign death certificates, for which both sorts seem to have about
equal occasion. Unqualified practitioners now make large incomes as
hygienists, and are resorted to as frequently by cultivated amateur
scientists who understand quite well what they are doing as by ignorant
people who are simply dupes. Bone-setters make fortunes under the very
noses of our greatest surgeons from educated and wealthy patients; and
some of the most successful doctors on the register use quite heretical
methods of treating disease, and have qualified themselves solely for
convenience. Leaving out of account the village witches who prescribe
spells and sell charms, the humblest professional healers in this
country are the herbalists. These men wander through the fields on
Sunday seeking for herbs with magic properties of curing disease,
preventing childbirth, and the like. Each of them believes that he is on
the verge of a great discovery, in which Virginia Snake Root will be
an ingredient, heaven knows why! Virginia Snake Root fascinates
the imagination of the herbalist as mercury used to fascinate the
alchemists. On week days he keeps a shop in which he sells packets of
pennyroyal, dandelion, etc., labelled with little lists of the diseases
they are supposed to cure, and apparently do cure to the satisfaction of
the people who keep on buying them. I have never been able to perceive
any distinction between the science of the herbalist and that of the
duly registered doctor. A relative of mine recently consulted a doctor
about some of the ordinary symptoms which indicate the need for a
holiday and a change. The doctor satisfied himself that the patient's
heart was a little depressed. Digitalis being a drug labelled as a
heart specific by the profession, he promptly administered a stiff dose.
Fortunately the patient was a hardy old lady who was not easily killed.
She recovered with no worse result than her conversion to Christian
Science, which owes its vogue quite as much to public despair of doctors
as to superstition. I am not, observe, here concerned with the question
as to whether the dose of digitalis was judicious or not; the point is,
that a farm laborer consulting a herbalist would have been treated in
exactly the same way.