ion with a bribe of a large sum of money and a
virtual guarantee that if he makes a mistake it can never be proved
against him, is to go wildly beyond the ascertained strain which human
nature will bear. It is simply unscientific to allege or believe
that doctors do not under existing circumstances perform unnecessary
operations and manufacture and prolong lucrative illnesses. The only
ones who can claim to be above suspicion are those who are so much
sought after that their cured patients are immediately replaced by fresh
ones. And there is this curious psychological fact to be remembered: a
serious illness or a death advertizes the doctor exactly as a hanging
advertizes the barrister who defended the person hanged. Suppose, for
example, a royal personage gets something wrong with his throat, or has
a pain in his inside. If a doctor effects some trumpery cure with a wet
compress or a peppermint lozenge nobody takes the least notice of him.
But if he operates on the throat and kills the patient, or extirpates
an internal organ and keeps the whole nation palpitating for days whilst
the patient hovers in pain and fever between life and death, his fortune
is made: every rich man who omits to call him in when the same symptoms
appear in his household is held not to have done his utmost duty to
the patient. The wonder is that there is a king or queen left alive in
Europe.

DOCTOR'S CONSCIENCES

There is another difficulty in trusting to the honor and conscience of
a doctor. Doctors are just like other Englishmen: most of them have
no honor and no conscience: what they commonly mistake for these is
sentimentality and an intense dread of doing anything that everybody
else does not do, or omitting to do anything that everybody else
does. This of course does amount to a sort of working or rule-of-thumb
conscience; but it means that you will do anything, good or bad,
provided you get enough people to keep you in countenance by doing it
also. It is the sort of conscience that makes it possible to keep order
on a pirate ship, or in a troop of brigands. It may be said that in
the last analysis there is no other sort of honor or conscience in
existence--that the assent of the majority is the only sanction known to
ethics. No doubt this holds good in political practice. If mankind knew
the facts, and agreed with the doctors, then the doctors would be in
the right; and any person who thought otherwise would be a lunatic. But
ma