miseducated, pecuniarily anxious people who call him in when they
have tried in vain every bottle and every pill the advertizing
druggist can persuade them to buy. The real remedy for
vivisection is the remedy for all the mischief that the medical
profession and all the other professions are doing: namely, more
knowledge. The juries which send the poor Peculiars to prison,
and give vivisectionists heavy damages against humane persons who
accuse them of cruelty; the editors and councillors and student-
led mobs who are striving to make Vivisection one of the
watchwords of our civilization, are not doctors: they are the
British public, all so afraid to die that they will cling
frantically to any idol which promises to cure all their
diseases, and crucify anyone who tells them that they must not
only die when their time comes, but die like gentlemen. In their
paroxysms of cowardice and selfishness they force the doctors to
humor their folly and ignorance. How complete and inconsiderate
their ignorance is can only be realized by those who have some
knowledge of vital statistics, and of the illusions which beset
Public Health legislation.


WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS AND WILL NOT GET

The demands of this poor public are not reasonable, but they are
quite simple. It dreads disease and desires to be protected
against it. But it is poor and wants to be protected cheaply.
Scientific measures are too hard to understand, too costly, too
clearly tending towards a rise in the rates and more public
interference with the insanitary, because insufficiently
financed, private house. What the public wants, therefore, is a