This was my opinion before I made any special study of therapeutics, and while studying I found numbers of prominent medical men who agree with me. One of them says that the "criticisms," quarrels, contradictions, and inconsistencies of medical men are doing more to lower the profession in the estimation of the intelligent laity and to cause people to follow the fads of "new schools" than all else combined. Think for a moment of some of these inconsistencies and contradictions. One doctor in a town tells the people that he "breaks up" typhoid fever. His rival, perhaps from the same college, tells the people that typhoid must "run its course" and cannot be broken up, and that any man who claims the contrary is a liar and a shyster. One surgeon makes a portion of the people believe he has saved dozens of lives in that community by surgical operations; the other physicians of the town tell the people openly, or at least hint, that there has been a great deal of needless butchery performed in that community in the name of surgery. And then the people see editorials in the daily press about the fad of having operations performed, and read in their health culture or Osteopathic journals from articles by the greatest M.D.s, in which it is admitted that surgery is practiced too largely as a graft. Professor Osler is quoted as saying: "Surgeons are finding altogether too many cases of appendicitis these days. Appendicitis is becoming so common and so easily detected that the physician's wife can diagnose a case of it over the telephone." One leading physician says medical treatment has little beneficial effect on pneumonia; another claims to be able to cure it, and lets the friends of his patient rely entirely on his medicine in the most desperate cases. Another says the main reliance should be heat. Another says ice-packs. Another says Antiphlogistine. Another says, "All those clay preparations are frauds, and the only safe way to treat pneumonia is by blood letting." Thus it goes, and this is only a sample of contradictions that arise in the treatment of diseases. Nor is the above an overdrawn picture. Most of it was from the journal of the editor who said he refused to send it to a layman who had sent his money in advance. But all that same stuff has been hashed and rehashed to the people through the sources I have already mentioned. There are not only these evidences of inconsistencies to edify (?) the people, but constantly recurring examples of incompetency and pretensions. There is no doubt a middle ground in all this, but it is not evident to the casual observer. If the true physician would honestly admit his limitations to the intelligent laity, much of this muddle would be avoided. While by such a course he may occasionally temporarily lose a patient, in the end both the public and profession would gain. The time has gone by to "assume an air of infallibility toward the public." CHAPTER V.