knowledge attributed to them); and though I know that there are
medical blackguards as well as military, legal, and clerical
blackguards (one soon finds that out when one is privileged to
hear doctors talking shop among themselves), the fact that I was
no more at a loss for private medical advice and attendance when
I had not a penny in my pocket than I was later on when I could
afford fees on the highest scale, has made it impossible for me
to share that hostility to the doctor as a man which exists and
is growing as an inevitable result of the present condition of
medical practice. Not that the interest in disease and
aberrations which turns some men and women to medicine and
surgery is not sometimes as morbid as the interest in misery and
vice which turns some others to philanthropy and "rescue work."
But the true doctor is inspired by a hatred of ill-health, and a
divine impatience of any waste of vital forces. Unless a man is
led to medicine or surgery through a very exceptional technical
aptitude, or because doctoring is a family tradition, or because
he regards it unintelligently as a lucrative and gentlemanly
profession, his motives in choosing the career of a healer are
clearly generous. However actual practice may disillusion and
corrupt him, his selection in the first instance is not a
selection of a base character.


THE DOCTOR'S HARDSHIPS

A review of the counts in the indictment I have brought against
private medical practice will show that they arise out of the
doctor's position as a competitive private tradesman: that is,
out of his poverty and dependence. And it should be borne in mind