The Washington herald., 1915-11-10
~ John 10. Danny.

fellow you were trying to cure OF the drink
| habit?"
"oh you mean Sanderson." the doctor ex-
claimed. Hes all right"
"Did you cure himf"
The doctor smiled. 81 didn't cure him of the
drink habit. But was the means Of curing him
of the OF the drink habit"
Then he told me how he had discovered quite
Unexpectedly that the patient had long been suf-
fering from distressing malady In the desire
to be cured of the drink habit the poor fellow
hadn't said anything about it. Perhaps one rea-
son was that he had been afraid of surgical
operation. "As soon as made an examination
rushed him off to hospital In couple OF weeks
he was all right and. though several months have
passed, he hasn't had anything to drink stronger
than water. He says he has no desire to drink
any more. The reason is that the irritation that
gave him the desire is gone. He thought he was
trying to escape from himself. What he really
was trying to escape from his irritation"
1t was the same doctor who said to me yes
terday: Il wish didn't have to spend so much
time at the free clinics"
AS / knew he had very remunerative prac-
tice I made a complimentary remark about his
philanthropy. 81 don't do it for philanthropyT
he exclaimed
why do you do it, them"
For practice"
Don't you get enough Of that among your
rich patients"
"Of course / don't, except in comparatively
rare instances. They're never really sick"
What do they come to you for, Them
Usually for symptoms that are merely su-
perfeial, beginnings of disease. If they were to
neglect themselves they'd become seriously i'll in
few weeks months. But they-know better.
They can afford to before the situation
grows serious In that regard they're different
from the poor, who avoid going to the doctor for
fear of the expense until they're obliged to 60.
They provide me with nearly all of my interesting
cases, the cases that keep me in practice and give
me chance to learn something"
But how about the free dispensares"
said. "Why can't they go there the
symptoms manifest themselves"
Zone reason is that many of them still hav.
prejudice against the free dispensaries. Another
is that the poor haven't learned to take care of
themselves. Still another reason is that in many
instances, they have time. They keep putting
the thing off till they get desperate. Then in
many instances it's too late. But we're going to
change all that"
Howl"
Instead of the poor patients going after the
doctors, the doctors will go after the patients.
There will be free medical service given to all
the workers as economic necessity. Well find
out that it doesn't pay to have so many sick peo-
pie in the world and that sickness isn't neces-
sty In that way, among many other items of
expense, we'll get rid of our prisons"
When l said that l didn't quite follow, the doc
tor went on: an the prisons of today nearly
all the SirL I don'f I1,,
or morally. mean physically They need treat
ment and men like Warden Johnston of San
Quentin is seeing to it that they get treatment
But large number of them, if th.y had had the
treatment before they committed the crimes that
landed them in prison, wouldn't have committed
the crimes. We've found out that criminality like
the drunkenness OF the young fellow we've been
speaking about, is form of weakness related to
the physical debility that call disease"
Then you don't recognize any naturally bad
people in the world"
"Yes, l do. / should say, from what the sta
tistics tell US, that about one out of every fifty
criminals is born criminal Why he is a born
criminal l don't know. But / do know from my
professional experience that the fault is not his
Whose il is l can't tell. 1t may be his fathers or
his mothers fathers, or it may be the fault of the
conditions that gave of his forbears a GRIM
inal tendency or that directly aected him at BIRTH
But to punish him for being born wrong would
be like furnishing any other kind of cripple. We
don't punish people for being born blind or deaf
and dumb We try to help them. The born GRIM
inal far from being execrated as he is, ought to
be both pitied and helped. Nowadays when we
speak of him we take tone that implies he
oughtn't to be shown any mercy. OF course
wouldn't let him go free any more than l would
a patient with any other menacing disease or
lunatic. I'd have him cared for and protected"
Protected" repeated.
Certainly. He's entitled to protection against
himself and against the prejudces of the thought
less and the ignorant and the mercess"
But the doctor wasn't much interested in the
born criminals, the exceptional people. He cared
mainly for the great of the normal. "We're
all possible criminals or the parents of possible
criminals. Change our environments from the one
that is healthy to one that is unhealthy and how
many of US would keep sound? Very few. In New
York they've discovered that the children of in
ebriates and of the weak-minded tend to become
criminals, if they not carefully nurtured which
means physically as well as morally nourished So
the authorities try to place those children in