almost divinatory skill in diagnosis are constantly needed for difficult
cases, are poulticing whitlows, vaccinating, changing unimportant
dressings, prescribing ether drams for ladies with timid leanings
towards dipsomania, and generally wasting their time in the pursuit 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.

Under such conditions no statistics as to the graduation of professional
ability among doctors are available. Assuming that doctors are normal
men and not magicians (and it is unfortunately very hard to persuade
people to admit so much and thereby destroy the romance of doctoring)
we may guess that the medical profession,