The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1908-10-24
klpllNe ON DOCTORS.

Rudyard Kipling delivered strik-
ing and characteristic address on doc
tors in London on October l at the
opening of the MiddleseX Hospital
school He divided mankind into two
classes-doctors and patients, confess
ing with some delicacy that he belong
ed to the patient class. This delicacy, /
he explained, was due to the fact that
a doctor once told him that all pa
tients were phenomenal liars where
their own symptoms were concerned.
From Kipling's point of view the aver
age patient looks on the average doc
tor very much as the noncombatant
looks on the troops who are fighting
on his behalf The more men there
ar, between his dearly-beloved body
and the unkind enemy the better the
noncombatant is pleased, Medical
students are trained men who in due
time will be drafted into the perma-
nently modified army which is al
ways fighting, always under fire,
against death. Kipling remarked it
as "a little unfortunate" that death,
as the senior practitioner, is bound
to win in the long run.
Doctors have no rights. Kipling
| said on this point:
1T was long ago decided that you
have no working hours that anybody is
bound to respect and that nothing eX-
cept extreme bodily illness will excuse
you for refusing to help the man who
| \ hi,,l- Io OF
hour of the day or night. Nobody will
care whether you are In your beds or
| your baths or on a holiday or at a
church or in theater. The little
/ vitality you have accumulated in your
leisure will be dragged out of you
again. In all times of flood fire, fam
and sudden death it will be required of
you that you report for duty at once.
! and that you stay on duty until your
strength fails-or your conscience re-
lieves you-whichever may be the
longer period. These are some of
your obligations and I do not think
they will grow any lighter.
Have you heard of any recent leg
islation to limit your output, any bill
for an eight-hour day for doctors? Do
y
opinion that will allow you not to at
tend a patient when you know that
the man never means to pay? Have
you heard of any cutlery against the
! people who could perfectly we'll afford
to pay, but prefer to cadge round the
hospitals and get advice and glass
eyes and cork legs for nothing? /
have not. 1t is required of you at
all moments to save others. 1t Is no
where laid down that you must save
yourselves"
But doctors have privileges that
is to say, they belong to the privileged
classes. You and kings" he told his
auditors, "are about the only people
whose explanation police will accept If
you exceed the speed limit with your
motor cars. On presentation of your
visiting card you can lass through the
most turbulent crowd unmolested and
even with applause" Furthermore.
IF you wave yellow flag over a
: center of population you can turn it
into desert. If you choose to fy a
! Red Cross flag over desert YOU can
/ turn it into a center Of population to-
) ward which, as ] have seen, men will
, crawl on their hands and knees. You
can forbid ship to enter a port. If
you think it necessary to the success
, OF an operation you can stop 10000
, ton liner with it's mails in mid-ocean
till the operation is concluded. You
: can tie up the traffic of a port with
out notice. You can order whole quar-
tiers of a city to be pulled down OF
burned, and you can count on armed
cooperation to see that vour prescrip
lions are efficiently carried out.
: A Doctors training shows daily ant
directly that things are what they arc
and their consequences what they will