work, or the public technical education of unskilled laborers'
sons to compete with him, so the doctor will resist with all his
powers of persecution every advance of science that threatens his
income. And as the advance of scientific hygiene tends to make
the private doctor's visits rarer, and the public inspector's
frequenter, whilst the advance of scientific therapeutics is in
the direction of treatments that involve highly organized
laboratories, hospitals, and public institutions generally, it
unluckily happens that the organization of private practitioners
which we call the medical profession is coming more and more to
represent, not science, but desperate and embittered antiscience:
a statement of things which is likely to get worse until the
average doctor either depends upon or hopes for an appointment in
the public health service for his livelihood.

So much for our guarantees as to medical science. Let us now deal
with the more painful subject of medical kindness.


DOCTORS AND VIVISECTION

The importance to our doctors of a reputation for the tenderest
humanity is so obvious, and the quantity of benevolent work
actually done by them for nothing (a great deal of it from sheer
good nature) so large, that at first sight it seems unaccountable
that they should not only throw all their credit away, but
deliberately choose to band themselves publicly with outlaws and
scoundrels by claiming that in the pursuit of their professional
knowledge they should be free from the restraints of law, of
honor, of pity, of remorse, of everything that distinguishes an