and "uric acid free" vegetarian diet over the way; shut windows,
big fires, and heavy overcoats to old Colonels, and open air and
as much nakedness as is compatible with decency to young
faddists, never once daring to say either "I don't know," or "I
don't agree." For the strength of the doctor's, as of every other
man's position when the evolution of social organization at last
reaches his profession, will be that he will always have open to
him the alternative of public employment when the private
employer becomes too tyrannous. And let no one suppose that the
words doctor and patient can disguise from the parties the fact
that they are employer and employee. No doubt doctors who are in
great demand can be as high-handed and independent as employees
are in all classes when a dearth in their labor market makes them
indispensable; but the average doctor is not in this position: he
is struggling for life in an overcrowded profession, and knows
well that "a good bedside manner" will carry him to solvency
through a morass of illness, whilst the least attempt at plain
dealing with people who are eating too much, or drinking too
much, or frowsting too much (to go no further in the list of
intemperances that make up so much of family life) would soon
land him in the Bankruptcy Court.

Private practice, thus protected, would itself protect
individuals, as far as such protection is possible, against the
errors and superstitions of State medicine, which are at worst no
worse than the errors and superstitions of private practice,
being, indeed, all derived from it. Such monstrosities as
vaccination are, as we have seen, founded, not on science, but on
half-crowns. If the Vaccination Acts, instead of being wholly
repealed as they are already half repealed, were strengthened by