A demand, however, can be inculcated. This is thoroughly understood
by fashionable tradesmen, who find no difficulty in persuading their
customers to renew articles that are not worn out and to buy things they
do not want. By making doctors tradesmen, we compel them to learn the
tricks of trade; consequently we find that the fashions of the year
include treatments, operations, and particular drugs, as well as hats,
sleeves, ballads, and games. Tonsils, vermiform appendices, uvulas, even
ovaries are sacrificed because it is the fashion to get them cut out,
and because the operations are highly profitable. The psychology of
fashion becomes a pathology; for the cases have every air of being
genuine: fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics, proving that
epidemics can be induced by tradesmen, and therefore by doctors.