They know and understand nothing of all this, less even than the poorest
peasant does. Give them workshops, and plenty of people, order engines
from abroad, and then they will arrange these matters. But to find out
how to ease the labour of the millions of the people in their present
conditions, they do not know, and cannot do it; and therefore, by their
knowledge and habits and wants, they are not at all fit for this
business.
A surgeon is in a still worse condition. His imaginary science is of
such a nature that he understands how to cure those only who have
nothing to do and who can utilize other men's labour. He requires a
countless number of expensive accessories, instruments, medicines,
sanitary dwellings, food, and drains, in order that he may act
scientifically: besides his fee he demands such expenses that, in order
to cure one patient, he must kill with starvation hundreds of those who
bear this expense.
He has studied under eminent persons in the capital cities, who attended
only to those patients whom they may take into hospitals, or who can
afford to buy all the necessary medicines and machines, and even go at
once from north to south, to these or those mineral waters, as the case
may be.
Their science is of such a kind that every country surgeon complains
that there is no possibility of attending to the work-people who are so
poor that they cannot afford sanitary accommodations, and that there are
no hospitals, and that he cannot attend to the business alone, that he
requires help and assistant-surgeons.
What does this really mean?
It means this,--that the want of the necessaries of life is the chief
cause of people's misfortunes, and the source of diseases as well as of
their spreading and incurability. Now science, under the banner of "the
division of labour," calls its champions to help the people. Science has
settled satisfactorily about the rich classes, and seeks how to cure
those who can get everything necessary for the purpose; and it sends
persons to cure in the same way those who have nothing to spare. But
there are no means; and therefore they must be raised from the people,
who become ill and catch diseases, and cannot be cured for want of
means.
The advocates of the healing art for the people say, that, up to the
present time, this business has not been sufficiently developed.
Evidently it is not yet developed, because if (which God forbid!) it
were developed among our people, and, instead of two doctors and
mid-wives and two assistant-surgeons in the district, there should be
twenty sent, as they want, then there would soon be no one left to
attend to. The scientific co-operation for the benefit of the people
must be of quite a different kind. And this, which ought to exist, has
not yet begun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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