of private fees. In no other profession is the practitioner
expected to do all the work involved in it from the first day of
his professional career to the last as the doctor is. The judge
passes sentence of death; but he is not expected to hang the
criminal with his own hands, as he would be if the legal
profession were as unorganized as the medical. The bishop is not
expected to blow the organ or wash the baby he baptizes. The
general is not asked to plan a campaign or conduct a battle at
half-past twelve and to play the drum at half-past two. Even if
they were, things would still not be as bad as in the medical
profession; for in it not only is the first-class man set to do
third-class work, but, what is much more terrifying, the third-
class man is expected to do first-class work. Every general
practitioner is supposed to be capable of the whole range of
medical and surgical work at a moment's notice; and the country
doctor, who has not a specialist nor a crack consultant at the
end of his telephone, often has to tackle without hesitation
cases which no sane practitioner in a town would take in hand
without assistance. No doubt this develops the resourcefulness of
the country doctor, and makes him a more capable man than his
suburban colleague; but it cannot develop the second-class man
into a first-class one. If the practice of law not only led to a
judge having to hang, but the hangman to judge, or if in the army
matters were so arranged that it would be possible for the
drummer boy to be in command at Waterloo whilst the Duke of
Wellington was playing the drum in Brussels, we should not be
consoled by the reflection that our hangmen were thereby made a
little more judicial-minded, and our drummers more responsible,
than in foreign countries where the legal and military
professions recognized the advantages of division of labor.