If, before a medical practitioner would allow me to enjoy the full
privileges of the healing art, he expected me to affirm my belief in a
considerable number of medical doctrines, drugs, and formulae, I should
think that he thereby implied my right to discuss the same, and my
ability to do so, if I knew how to express myself in English.
Suppose, for instance, the Medical Society should refuse to give us an
opiate, or to set a broken limb, until we had signed our belief in a
certain number of propositions,--of which we will say this is the first:
I. All men's teeth are naturally in a state of total decay or caries,
and, therefore, no man can bite until every one of them is extracted and
a new set is inserted according to the principles of dentistry adopted by
this Society.
I, for one, should want to discuss that before signing my name to it, and
I should say this:--Why, no, that is n't true. There are a good many bad
teeth, we all know, but a great many more good ones. You must n't trust
the dentists; they are all the time looking at the people who have bad
teeth, and such as are suffering from toothache.
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