THE CONDITION OF INDIA (_Continued_)
DOCTORS
READER: I now understand the lawyers; the good they may have done is
accidental. I feel that the profession is certainly hateful. You,
however, drag in these doctors also, how is that?
EDITOR: The views I submit to you are those I have adopted. They are not
original. Western writers have used stronger terms regarding both
lawyers and doctors. One writer has likened the whole modern system to
the Upas tree. Its branches are represented by parasitical professions,
including those of law and medicine, and over the trunk has been raised
the axe of true religion. Immorality is the root of the tree. So you
will see that the views do not come right out of my mind, but they
represent the combined experiences of many. I was at one time a great
lover of the medical profession. It was my intention to become a doctor
for the sake of the country. I no longer hold that opinion. I now
understand why the medicine men (the vaids) among us have not occupied a
very honourable status.
The English have certainly effectively used the medical profession for
holding us. English physicians are known to have used the profession
with several Asiatic potentates for political gain.
Doctors have almost unhinged us. Sometimes I think that quacks are
better than highly qualified doctors. Let us consider: the business of a
doctor is to take care of the body, or, properly speaking, not even
that. Their business is really to rid the body of diseases that may
afflict it. How do these diseases arise? Surely by our negligence or
indulgence. I overeat, I have indigestion, I go to a doctor, he gives me
medicine. I am cured, I overeat again, and I take his pills again. Had I
not taken the pills in the first instance, I would have suffered the
punishment deserved by me, and I would not have overeaten again. The
doctor intervened and helped me to indulge myself. My body thereby
certainly felt more at ease, but my mind became weakened. A continuance
of a course of a medicine must, therefore, result in loss of control
over the mind.
I have indulged in vice, I contract a disease, a doctor cures me, the
odds are that I shall repeat the vice. Had the doctor not intervened,
nature would have done its work, and I would have acquired mastery over
myself, would have been freed from vice, and would have become happy.
Hospitals are institutions for propagating sin. Men take less care of
their bodies, and immorality increases. European doctors are the worst
of all. For the sake of a mistaken care of the human body, they kill
annually thousands of animals. They practise vivisection. No religion
sanctions this. All say that it is not necessary to take so many lives
for the sake of our bodies.
These doctors violate our religious instinct. Most of their medical
preparations contain either animal fat or spirituous liquors; both of
these are tabooed by Hindus and Mahomedans. We may pretend to be
civilised, call religious prohibitions a superstition and wantonly
indulge in what we like. The fact remains that the doctors induce us to
indulge, and the result is that we have become deprived of self-control
and have become effeminate. In these circumstances, we are unfit to
serve the country. To study European medicine is to deepen our slavery.
It is worth considering why we take up the profession of medicine. It is
certainly not taken up for the purpose of serving humanity. We become
doctors so that we may obtain honours and riches. I have endeavoured to
show that there is no real service of humanity in the profession, and
that it is injurious to mankind. Doctors make a show of their knowledge,
and charge exorbitant fees. Their preparations, which are intrinsically
worth a few pennies, cost shillings. The populace in its credulity and
in the hope of ridding itself of some disease, allows itself to be
cheated. Are not quacks then, whom we know, better than the doctors who
put on an air of humaneness?