64 SCIENCE 
The pledge is very fairly as well as very in- 
geniously worded. A doctor whose livelihood 
depends upon his practise might well shrink 
from entering upon an obligation which he 
might find left him isolated. To say, however, 
that he is willing to run the risks of refusing 
work under the act if others will stand by him 
is a very different matter. And here we may 
remark that the number, 23,000, is not taken 
at haphazard. It is calculated that at the very 
least 8,000 doctors will be required to work the 
insurance scheme. Therefore if 23,000 of the 
medical men of the country agree to stand 
together in not working it, the act can not 
possibly be put into successful operation. The 
result of The Practitioner's second move will, 
we take it, not be announced before these pages 
have gone to press, but we shall be very much 
surprised if the second voting does not corre- 
spond with the first. If it does, and some 28,- 
000 doctors are pledged not to take service 
under the act, the doctors will have done what, 
in our opinion, the Lords ought to have done: 
they will have secured a period of delay in 
which just and reasonable terms can be made 
with the profession as a whole, and any attempt 
to take the doctors in detail defeated. 
Before we leave the subject we must point 
out one or two misapprehensions which have 
arisen, or are likely to arise, in the public 
mind in regard to the movement. In the first 
place the public must not suppose that the doc- 
tors are threatening to withhold medical advice 
from the poor or from the sick, the injured or 
the dying, until they have got their terms. 
Nothing in the nature of a refusal of their 
services is threatened or is contemplated by the 
doctors. They merely say that they will not 
enter into the special and peculiar contracts 
which they will be required to make under the 
act if they are to obtain its so-called benefits. 
The result will only be that medical attendance 
on the poor will go on exactly as it is going on 
at this moment. The poor and the artisans 
will be looked after by the doctors in the fu- 
ture just as they have been looked after by the 
doctors in the past and are being looked after 
now. There is not the slightest ground for the 
suggestion that the doctors are trying to ex- 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 889 
tort terms by a strike or are doing anything 
which would disgrace the most humane and 
the most self-sacrificing of all the professions. 
As before, they will do what no other profes- 
sion does: give an immense amount of gratu- 
itous service, not because they like doing work 
without being paid any more than other men, 
but because it is their honorable tradition to 
relieve suffering first and consider the ques- 
tion of payment afterwards—to let the sick 
and the injured have medical aid gratis or for 
some derisory remuneration rather than that 
men and women should suffer when that suf- 
fering can be relieved. That noble attitude 
can, and will, be maintained perfectly well 
even if the doctors refrain from signing the 
unfair contracts which will be presented for 
their signature under the act. The doctors 
are not proposing to strike or to put an end 
to any existing contract, but merely to refuse 
to make new ones which they consider unfair. 
In truth, the language that has been used 
about the strike of the doctors, even by the 
doctors themselves, is chiefly misleading 
rhetoric. There is no analogy whatever be- 
tween the action of the medical profession 
and that of strikers in the great majority of 
eases. The doctors are not demanding higher 
fees and better conditions of work than they 
get at present, but are merely refusing to ac- 
cept what they are confident will turn out to 
be lower fees and worse conditions of work.— 
The Spectator. 
SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
The Changing Chinese, Oriental and Western 
Cultures in China. By Epwarp ALSworTH 
Ross, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Sociology 
in the University of Wisconsin. New York, 
The Century Co. 1911. 8°. Pp. xvi 
356. Price $2.40, postage 18 cents. 
Almost on the day that the great Chinese 
insurrection broke out, this book emerged 
from the press. The coincidence is at least 
fortunate from whatever point of view one 
sees it. The book is not exactly a prophecy, 
and it is still too early to speak of the fulfil- 
ment of any one’s prophecy. But the reader 
of the book will be put in possession of facts 
