"Indeed, Mr. Bib, it will be poor, poor Dobbin!" said the Idiot. "I don't think that many people besides you and myself realize how desperately serious a menace it is that hangs over us; and I feel that one of the first acts of the Administration, after it has succeeded in putting grape juice into the Constitution as our national tipple, and constructed a solid Portland cement wall across the Vice President's thorax to insure that promised four years of silence, should be an effort to control this terrible situation." "You talk as if it could be done," said the Doctor doubtfully. "Of course it can be done," said the Idiot. "Doctors being engaged in Inter-State Commerce--" "Doctors? Interstate Commerce?" cried Mr. Brief. "That's a new one on me, Mr. Idiot. Everybody is apparently in Interstate Commerce in your opinion. Seems to me it was only the other day that you spoke of Clairvoyants being in it." "Sure," said the Idiot. "And it's the same way with the doctors. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, where a man passes from this state into the future state, you'll find a doctor mixed up in it somewhere, even if it's only as a coroner. This being so, it would be perfectly proper to refer the matter to the Interstate Commerce Commission for a solution. "Anyhow, something ought to be done to handle the situation while the menace is in its infancy. We need the ounce of prevention. Now, my suggestion would be that the law should step in and either place a limit to the number of doctors to be turned out annually, on a basis of so many doctors to so many hundreds of population--say three doctors to every hundred people--just as in certain communities the excise law allows only one saloon for every thousand registered voters; or else, since the State permits medical schools to operate under a charter, authorizing them to manufacture physicians and surgeons ad lib., and turn them loose on the public, the State should provide work for these doctors to do. "To this end we might have, for instance, a Bureau of Disease Dissemination, subject perhaps to the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior, under whose direction, acting in coöperation with the Department of Agriculture, every package of seeds sent out by a Congressman to his constituents would have a sprinkling of germs of one kind or another mixed in with the seeds, thus spreading little epidemics of comparatively harmless disorders like the mumps, the measles, or the pip, around in various over-healthy communities where the doctors were in danger of going over the hill to the poorhouse. Surely if we are justified in making special efforts to help the farmers we ought not to hesitate to do the doctors a good turn once in a while." "You think the public would stand for that, do you?" queried the Bibliomaniac scornfully.