Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XVII. Doctors
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Stock Exchange or open a shop. The doctors
should walk about like sages, honoured and
protected by all men. They should be welcome to
take what they liked from their rich patients
for their poor patients and for themselves, but
they should not count their visits or write any
bills. What was to the heart of the mother the
value in cash of the life of her child you had
saved? What was the proper fee for taking the
fear of death out of a pair of terror-stricken eyes
by a comforting word or a mere stroke of your
hand? How many francs were you to charge
for every second of the death-struggle your
morphia syringe had snatched from the
executioner? How long were we to dump on
suffering mankind all these expensive patent
medicines and drugs with modern labels but
with roots sprung from medieval superstition?
We well knew that our number of efficacious
drugs could be counted on the ends of our fingers
and were handed to us by benevolent Mother
Nature at a cheap price. Why should I, who
was a fashionable doctor, drive about in a smart
carriage, while my colleague in the slums had to
walk on foot? Why did the State spend many
hundred times more money on teaching the art
of killing than the art of healing? Why didn’t
we build more hospitals and fewer churches, you
could pray to God everywhere but you could not
operate in a gutter! Why did we build so many
comfortable homes for professional murderers and
housebreakers and so few for the homeless poor in
the slums? Why shouldn’t they be told that
they should feed themselves? There is no man
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