price. During the first great epidemic of influenza towards the
end of the nineteenth century a London evening paper sent round a
journalist-patient to all the great consultants of that day, and
published their advice and prescriptions; a proceeding
passionately denounced by the medical papers as a breach of
confidence of these eminent physicians. The case was the same;
but the prescriptions were different, and so was the advice. Now
a doctor cannot think his own treatment right and at the same
time think his colleague right in prescribing a different
treatment when the patient is the same. Anyone who has ever known
doctors well enough to hear medical shop talked without reserve
knows that they are full of stories about each other's blunders
and errors, and that the theory of their omniscience and
omnipotence no more holds good among themselves than it did with
Moliere and Napoleon. But for this very reason no doctor dare
accuse another of malpractice. He is not sure enough of his own
opinion to ruin another man by it. He knows that if such conduct
were tolerated in his profession no doctor's livelihood or
reputation would be worth a year's purchase. I do not blame him:
I would do the same myself. But the effect of this state of
things is to make the medical profession a conspiracy to hide its
own shortcomings. No doubt the same may be said of all
professions. They are all conspiracies against the laity; and I
do not suggest that the medical conspiracy is either better or
worse than the military conspiracy, the legal conspiracy, the
sacerdotal conspiracy, the pedagogic conspiracy, the royal and
aristocratic conspiracy, the literary and artistic conspiracy,
and the innumerable industrial, commercial, and financial
conspiracies, from the trade unions to the great exchanges, which
make up the huge conflict which we call society. But it is less