THE CALL OF THE LAND 



know little, for application to all sorts and 

 conditions of bodies of which they know 

 less." We have seen it queried whether the 

 "adult dose" of today is not a pure piece of 

 empiricism differing in degree from the 

 eighteenth-century medical empiricism, but 

 essentially the same in kind. 



Physicians might vastly increase their 

 usefulness by becoming to a greater extent 

 than now instructors of the public in mat- 

 ters pertaining to their specialty. 



Innumerable human beings suffer 

 through life from curable complaints and 

 deformities because neither they nor their 

 friends know these evils to be curable. The 

 proportion of intelligent people totally 

 ignorant of the wonders which surgery and 

 medicine are now accomplishing is aston- 

 ishingly large. In many neighborhoods 

 club feet, hernia, crosseyes, curvature of the 

 spine, and a hundred other ailments, are 

 common, in curable forms, the patients hav- 

 ing no idea that relief is possible. Physi- 

 cians owe it to sufferers to make these won- 

 ders known. The suspicion, sure, of course, 



360 



