That a cat has germs on her fur and whiskers does not prove that she is a menace to health; but doctors are often a menace to life and health. Much of the surgery performed is unnecessary and frequently results in death. Vaccination and the administering of serums and antitoxins are frequently followed by death or impaired health. One of the gravest charges against the prescribing of medicines is that they suppress or mask the symptoms and do not remove the cause of the disease, but leave the patient to continue in the error of his ways until overtaken again by the same trouble or an equivalent that has cropped out in some other place; and by that time the malady has perhaps reached a fatal stage. In some respects doctors are like cats. They caterwaul, and occasionally they purr. When a woman patient calls at a doctor’s office and he does not know just what is the matter with her or what to do to cure her, if he belongs to a certain type in the profession, he holds her hand and purrs and is so sympathetic that she leaves his office in a transport, walks on air, and goes home convinced that no one understands her case as well as he does. Or else he tells her how beautiful she looked on the operating table. After such a subtle appeal to her vanity she pays without demur his bill of $300 or $400. He takes great care not to offend his patients by telling them unpleasant truths, but instead resorts to delicate flattery. If a woman comes to his office suffering from some ailment brought on chiefly by eating devitalized foods, he purrs softly while he determines the latitude and longitude of her pain and gently inquires if she has had a shock recently. She thinks hard for a moment and recalls that she has had, that the news of the death of a child of an intimate friend was broken to her abruptly. Yes, that must have been what caused her condition. Lacking the ability to direct patients headed for perdition by reason of wrong living how to live so that they can regain their health while continuing their work where they are, he sometimes recommends a change of climate or that they take a rest. Change of scene or occupation usually affords some slight temporary alleviation that the patients regard as a cure. When patients have a cold or the grippe, instead of making plain to them what laws of health they have violated and that their illness is a direct result, the doctor, it not infrequently happens, tells them that it is “going around.” Colds and grippe are consequently in the popular mind of mysterious origin, and the victims complacently regard themselves as blameless but unfortunate.