Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/774

 754 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

a matter of time when by retrogressive movement the stage of civilization represented by the witch-doctor and sorceress would be reached.

If it should be said, as it is being said in some quarters now, that a boy will by his own effort keep moving onward after he separates himself from all educational agencies, it may be answered that both theory and practice disprove the proposition, as it applies to the majority of persons at any rate. Of course, physicians, like the members of many other professions, appreciate the necessity of keeping up with the times, and so they have their organizations for mutual helpfulness through discussion and stimulation ; but yet everyone knows old doctors who are tam- pering with the human body today, who are administering drugs according to the custom of a century ago, and they are supremely ignorant of all that modern science has accomplished ; and, what is worse, they are hostile to all the new-fangled ways. It is this state of affairs which led Holmes to say: " I firmly believe that if the whole materia medico, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind, and all the worse for the fishes." Shakespeare, too, advised man to "throw physic to the dogs" and have none of it. The more or less general sus- picion of the ordinary doctor, as able to heal disease, is indicated in a line from one of the old poets :

See one physician like a tiller plies, The patient lingers, and by inches dies ; But two physicians, like a pair of oars, Waft him more swiftly to the Stygian shores.

One not infrequently comes across a doctor who seems to be little more than a modern version of the wizard or conjurer. It is impossible for men of this stamp to continually readjust them- selves to changing views and practices incident to progress, and so they ridicule the whole thing. When one gets a bread-and-butter relation to a situation, he quickly settles into the method of reacting upon it with which he begins, and which brings him a measure of success, and then he goes on doing the same thing over and over again. This is what makes it so imperative that he should not take the crucial step until he can summon for his