The picture of concerted professional fraud given us in _The Doctor's Dilemma_ is not too exaggerated for the purposes of a debating argument; but in his long essay on the subject he gives a far more reasonable statement of the case. He does not treat the doctor as a murderer, or a pickpocket, or a human vulture, or even a cold-blooded cynic; he explains what is likely to happen to the ordinary, moderately decent, normal man, without any special moral or intellectual equipment, who becomes a doctor. "As to the honour and conscience of doctors, they have as much as any other class of men, no more and no less. And what other men," he adds characteristically, "dare pretend to be impartial where they have a strong pecuniary interest on one side?" He analyses the psychology of the practitioner and the specialist. He shows how much guesswork there must be where even the most distinguished differ; in what manner we are all handed over, bound, to the tender mercies of the men who are often poor, overworked, unscientific, and, if they are specialists, prejudiced by exclusive study of one disease. What he says about the surgeon and the specialist is nearer to the truth than what he says about the general practitioner. Long experience of all sorts of illnesses is more valuable for the curing of simple diseases than much so-called "scientific knowledge;" and, as it happens, the life of the general practitioner who comes into sympathetic contact with so many men and women of different types is one which does promote certain healthy cynicisms and human decencies singularly lacking in the specialist on the one side and the routine-driven hospital nurse on the other. But there we have the individual equation. Mr. Shaw is good at considering general cases; he is never, in his writing, much concerned about individuals.