CHAPTER XVII 

 MEDICINE AND MORALS 



QUITE possibly the joining of the 

 terms medicine and morals in the title 

 may to some seem strange. The two things 

 so named, not a few more or less intelligent 

 people regard as hopeless 'incompatibles, 

 each the contradictory opposite of the other, 

 so that if one is present anywhere the other 

 cannot be. Such prejudice is giving way, 

 but it still exists in considerable force. 

 Witness the numbers of people whom no 

 amount of suffering, no threat of death, will 

 induce to call a physician. This temper is 

 unfortunate, destroying useful lives, caus- 

 ing needless pain and fostering baneful ill- 

 feeling among men. Spite of isolated high 

 fees to physicians or rewards like the 

 10,000 voted by Parliament to Edward 

 Jenner in 1802, and the 20,000 voted him 

 in 1807, public regard for the medical call- 

 ing is too low. No physician save Lister, we 

 believe, has ever yet been made a peer in 



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