ed, nobody can ever prove that it was unnecessary. If I
refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death
may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever
prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation
is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative
side. The result is that we hear of "conservative surgeons" as a
distinct class of practitioners who make it a rule not to operate if
they can possibly help it, and who are sought after by the people who
have vitality enough to regard an operation as a last resort. But no
surgeon is bound to take the conservative view. If he believes that an
organ is at best a useless survival, and that if he extirpates it the
patient will be well and none the worse in a fortnight, whereas to
await the natural cure would mean a month's illness, then he is clearly
justified in recommending the operation even if the cure without
operation is as certain as anything of the kind ever can be. Thus the
conservative surgeon and the radical or extirpatory surgeon may both
be right as far as the ultimate cure is concerned; so that their
consciences do not help them out of their differences.

CREDULITY AND CHLOROFORM

There is no harder scientific fact in the world than the fact that
belief can be produced in practically unlimited quantity and intensity,
without observation or reasoning, and even in defiance of both, by the
simple desire to believe founded on a strong interest in believing.
Everybody recognizes this in the case of the amatory infatuations of
the adolescents who see angels and heroes in obviously (to others)
commonplace and even objectionable maidens and youths. But it holds good
over the entire field of human activity. The hardest-headed materialist
will become a consulter of table-rappers and slate-writers if he loses
a child or a wife so beloved that the desire to revive and communicate
with them becomes irresistible. The cobbler believes that there is
nothing like leather. The Imperialist who regards the conquest of
England by a foreign power as the worst of political misfortunes
believes that the conquest of a foreign power by England would be a boon
to the conquered. Doctors are no more proof against such illusions than
other men. Can anyone then doubt that under existing conditions a great
deal of unnecessary and mischievous operating is bound to go on,
and that patients are encouraged to