nkind does not agree, and does not know the facts. All that can
be said for medical popularity is that until there is a practicable
alternative to blind trust in the doctor, the truth about the doctor is
so terrible that we dare not face it. Moliere saw through the doctors;
but he had to call them in just the same. Napoleon had no illusions
about them; but he had to die under their treatment just as much as the
most credulous ignoramus that ever paid sixpence for a bottle of strong
medicine. In this predicament most people, to save themselves from
unbearable mistrust and misery, or from being driven by their conscience
into actual conflict with the law, fall back on the old rule that if you
cannot have what you believe in you must believe in what you have. When
your child is ill or your wife dying, and you happen to be very fond of
them, or even when, if you are not fond of them, you are human enough to
forget every personal grudge before the spectacle of a fellow creature
in pain or peril, what you want is comfort, reassurance, something to
clutch at, were it but a straw. This the doctor brings you. You have a
wildly urgent feeling that something must be done; and the doctor does
something. Sometimes what he does kills the patient; but you do not know
that; and the doctor assures you that all that human skill could do
has been done. And nobody has the brutality to say to the newly bereft
father, mother, husband, wife, brother, or sister, "You have killed your
lost darling by your credulity."

THE PECULIAR PEOPLE

Besides, the calling in of the doctor is now compulsory except in cases
where the patient is an adult--and not too ill to decide the steps to
be taken. We are subject to prosecution for manslaughter or for criminal
neglect if the patient dies without the consolations of the medical
profession. This menace is kept before the public by the Peculiar
People. The Peculiars, as they are called, have gained their name by
believing that the Bible is infallible, and taking their belief quite
seriously. The Bible is very clear as to the treatment of illness.
The Epistle of James; chapter v., contains the following explicit
directions:

14. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the Church;
and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the
Lord:

15. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall
raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgi