THE CALL OF THE LAND 



Based in truth, the medical profession is the 

 arch foe of nostrums, superstitions and 

 shams. Love philters, Cagliostrian elixirs, 

 Chinese charms, Indian moon-herbs, and 

 negro hoodoos, all disappear when ^Escula- 

 pius with his balances, retorts and crucibles 

 draws nigh. 



All have known surgeons and perhaps 

 physicians who seemed destitute of feeling, 

 glorying in their callousness at sight of pain. 

 We remember an army surgeon who always 

 wore the same corduroy clothing in which 

 he operated, refusing to let the blood be 

 washed off. He was weak enough to be 

 proud of his gory look. Hardly less ghoul- 

 ish is he who cuts living human tissue with 

 only a sense of the mechanical and scien- 

 tific precision and the artistic finish of the 

 work, an insensibility which every philan- 

 thropic soul must condemn. 



But cases like these are few. As a rule 

 the calm, resolute, self-possessed surgeon 

 whom we are tempted to think a ghoul is 

 really an angel of mercy. Only such as he 

 are thoroughly fit to cut. The writer was 



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