XIII STATE AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 325 



man may choose to be killed is a violation of that- 

 liberty, yet I do think that it is far better to 

 let everybody do as he likes. Whether that be so 

 or not, I am perfectly certain that, as a matter of 

 practice, it is absolutely impossible to prohibit the 

 practice of medicine by people who have no spe- 

 cial qualification for it. Consider the terrible con- 

 sequences of attempting to prohibit practice by a 

 very large class of persons who are certainly not 

 technically qualified — ^^I am far from saying a word 

 as to whether they are otherwise qualified or not. 

 The number of Ladies Bountiful — grandmothers, 

 aunts, and mothers-in-law — whose chief delight 

 lies in the administration of their cherished pro- 

 vision of domestic medicine, is past computation, 

 and one shudders to think of what might happen 

 if their energies were turned from this innocuous, 

 if not beneficent channel, by the strong arm of the 

 law. But the thing is impracticable. 



Another reason for intervention is propounded, 

 I am sorry to sa}', by some, though not many, 

 members of the medical profession, and is simply 

 an expression of that trades unionism which tends 

 to infest professions no less than trades. 



The general practitioner trying to make both 

 ends meet on a poor practice, whose medical train- 

 ing has cost him a good deal of time and money, 

 finds that many potential patients, whose small 

 fees would be welcome as the little that helps, 

 prefer to go and get their shilling's worth of " doc- 



