e for
health and longevity. That the Christian Science doctrine is a sheer
absurdity, no one can hold more emphatically than the present writer; but
it cannot be denied that in thousands of cases its acceptance has been of
physical benefit through its subjective effect upon the believer.
Personally, I would not purchase any benefit to my physical life at such
sacrifice of my intellectual integrity; I mention the point only by way of
accentuating the undisputed fact that the presence or absence of concern
about health may have a potent influence on one's bodily welfare.

Although it is a still further digression from the main purpose of this
paper, I must permit myself a few words on another point relating to the
strictly medical claims of the plan of "universal periodic medical
examination." It is natural that its advocates say nothing about the
danger of errors in diagnosis; everybody knows that this danger exists,
but sensible men do not allow it to deter them from consulting a
physician; in this, as in other affairs of life, they do not cry for the
moon, but do the best they can. But it seems to be wholly overlooked by
the advocates of the propaganda of "universal periodic examination" that
the extent of this danger under present conditions affords no indication
at all of what it would be under the system they contemplate. Its cardinal
virtue, they constantly proclaim, would be the detection of the very
slightest indication of impairment: "The task before us is to discover the
first sign of departure from the normal physiological path, and promptly
and effectually to apply the brake." The consequence must necessarily be
that for one case of false alarm that occurs today there will be a score,
or a hundred, under the new regime. For, in the first place, the
individuals seeking advice will not be, as they now are in the main,
selected cases in which there is some antecedent presumption that there is
something wrong; and secondly, the examiner, bent upon the one great
object of overlooking nothing, however slight, will give warnings which,
whether technically justifiable or not, will in great numbers of cases
have a wholly unjustifiable significance to the mind of the subject. Who
shall say how many persons will thus be made to carry through life a
burden of solicitude about their health from which, if left to their own
devices, they would have been wholly free?

But it is not my design to find fault with this scheme as