e picture of concerted professional fraud given us in _The Doctor's
Dilemma_ is not too exaggerated for the purposes of a debating
argument; but in his long essay on the subject he gives a far more
reasonable statement of the case. He does not treat the doctor as a
murderer, or a pickpocket, or a human vulture, or even a cold-blooded
cynic; he explains what is likely to happen to the ordinary,
moderately decent, normal man, without any special moral or
intellectual equipment, who becomes a doctor. "As to the honour and
conscience of doctors, they have as much as any other class of men, no
more and no less. And what other men," he adds characteristically,
"dare pretend to be impartial where they have a strong pecuniary
interest on one side?" He analyses the psychology of the practitioner
and the specialist. He shows how much guesswork there must be where
even the most distinguished differ; in what manner we are all handed
over, bound, to the tender mercies of the men who are often poor,
overworked, unscientific, and, if they are specialists, prejudiced by
exclusive study of one disease. What he says about the surgeon and the
specialist is nearer to the truth than what he says about the general
practitioner. Long experience of all sorts of illnesses is more
valuable for the curing of simple diseases than much so-called
"scientific knowledge;" and, as it happens, the life of the general
practitioner who comes into sympathetic contact with so many men and
women of different types is one which does promote certain healthy
cynicisms and human decencies singularly lacking in the specialist on
the one side and the routine-driven hospital nurse on the other. But
there we have the individual equation. Mr. Shaw is good at
considering general cases; he is never, in his writing, much concerned
about individuals.

The essay which preceded _Getting Married_ is stronger in its attack
than in its reconstructive proposals; and the essay is better than the
play, because Mr. Shaw can present arguments more effectively than
persons, and arguments are more suited to essays than to plays. It is
interesting to find him confessing that "young women come to me and
ask me whether they ought to consent to marry the man they have
decided to live with." Mr. Shaw, of course, urges them "on no account
to compromise themselves without the security of an authentic
wedding-ring." He should not have been surprised. He, if anyone,
should have known that i