Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/174

160 worse off than in the sixteenth century; and, judging by fruits, there is much reason to hope they are better off.

Now the little body question is a perfect parallel to the great soul question in all its circumstances. The only things in which the parallel fails are the following: Every one who believes in a future state sees that the soul question is incomparably more important than the body question, and every one can try the body question by experiment to a larger extent than the soul question. The proverb, which always has a spark of truth at the bottom, says that every man of forty is either a fool or a physician; but did even the proverb maker ever dare to say that every man is at any age either a fool or a fit teacher of religion?

Common sense points out the following settlement of the medical question: and to this it will come sooner or later.

Let every man who chooses—subject to one common law of manslaughter for all the crass cases—doctor the bodies of all who choose to trust him, and recover payment according to agreement in the courts of law. Provided always that every person practising should be registered at a moderate fee in a register to be republished every six months.

Let the register give the name, address, and asserted qualification of each candidate—as licentiate, or doctor, or what not, of this or that college, hall, university, &c., home or foreign. Let it be competent to any man to describe himself as qualified by study in public schools without a diploma, or by private study, or even by intuition or divine inspiration, if he please. But whatever he holds his qualification to be, that let him declare. Let all qualification which of its own nature admits of proof be proved, as by the diploma or certificate, &c., leaving things which cannot be proved, as asserted private study, intuition, inspiration, &c., to work their own way.

Let it be highly penal to assert to the patient any qualification which is not in the register, and let the register be sold very cheap. Let the registrar give each registered practitioner a copy of the register in his own case; let any patient have power to demand a sight of this copy; and let no money for attendance be recoverable in any case in which there has been false representation.

Let any party in any suit have a right to produce what medical testimony he pleases. Let the medical witness produce his register, and let his evidence he for the jury, as is that of an engineer or a practitioner of any art which is not attested by diplomas.