The Evolution of Medical Science. 156 



lieve that doctors have some magic way of getting at a 

 knowledge of disease, and a miraculous way of curing. To 

 be able to do what nine hundred and ninety-nine out of 

 every thousand people believe their doctors can do, would 

 require more knowledge than could be mastered in a thou- 

 sand years, with a brain as retentive as that of a child of 

 fifteen and logical acumen as fine as that of a Newton. 



Physicians are praised for things they never do, and 

 blamed for results of which they are innocent. Where 

 their work is most laborious, and their mental anxiety most 

 intense, their pay, as a rule, is abuse only, and they are 

 denounced and vilified without mercy. Every doctor has 

 this experience. There are no exceptions. The denser the 

 ignorance of the patient, the greater the abuse. And yet 

 no class of men can anywhere be shown with a less selfish 

 record than that of the physician. 



Medicine in all ages has attracted into its ranks the 

 most self-sacrificing members of society. As a science it 

 was born in altruism. To this day it offers the greatest 

 opportunities of any department of life for the practice 

 of the most ennobling graces of character. These con- 

 stitute a primary caluse of its evolution. To pass this 

 phase unnoticed, would be to do Medical Science scant 

 justice. Medical men stand alone in the earth among all 

 others, striving with their whole might to extinguish their 

 own business. They preach temperance, virtue, and cleanli- 

 ness, knowing well that when the people come to follow 

 their advice their occupations, like Othello's, will be gone. 

 They establish Boards of Healtli to arrest the spread of 

 disease, while well aware that such sanitary measures steal 

 money from their purses. How well they succeed, is shown 

 by official statistics. The number of deaths from conta- 

 gious diseases are directly proportioned to the certainty 

 of the doctor being called. Nobody ever fails to send for 

 a physician in typhus fever. Only six persons in a mil- 

 lion now die of this disease. Many more used to die when 

 no effort toward its suppression was made. Whooping- 

 cough seldom frightens patients, and neighborly old ladies 

 of both sexes give advice. As a consequence 428 in a mil- 

 lion die of this disease. Measles, being a little more 

 serious, needs the doctor oftener, and only 341 in a mil- 

 lion die. Scarlet-fever is still more alarming, so that medi- 

 cal advice is more in demand, and 222 in a million die of 



