Newark evening star and Newark advertiser., 1916-01-24
A Doctors View of Doctors.


have received a letter from a
reader who asks, Are not all doctors
bigoted? Why are they always ready
to fight new ideas?'
| No, my dear reader. all doctors are
not bigoted. I will tell you why. En-
tering a profession does not change
human nature. When a man has a
growing mind an eager insight, a
large sympathy for humanity, that
man cannot be made smaller by the
profession he happens to enter. When
Il little man goes into a profession
he keeps right on being little man.
Both of these things are Just as true
of the profession of preaching, and of
law, as of medicine. II is the size
of the man that counts.
The kind of man who fights new
ideas would fight them in whatever
profession he found them-in what
ever trade he found them. The kind
of man who is looking for light will
find the light, no matter where you
put him, no matter what label he
wears.
If you stopped to think OF this you
would realize that all doctors are not
likely to be bigoted. 1t is just as
unfair to doctors to take one or more
samples as characteristic of all as it
would be to think i'll of the splendid
profession of law because you had
been cheated by an unscrupulous law
yer, or to condemn the noble SER
vice of the pulpit because you knew
a small-sized preacher.
When doctors make mistakes 1t is
not because they are doctors. 1t is
because they are men. Until we have
100 per cent. men we shall not have
10n rarpfocainns II iu wit In
professions just as 1t is with mar
riage, for example. An institution is
only as good as the persons of whom
1t is composed. The dinner is only as
clean as the cook.
So that if you wish to figure out
how honest the average doctor Is you
might start by figuring out how hon
est the average person is. I hope you
will decide after doing this that the
average doctor wants to do the right
thing. Whether he does 1t or not will
depend on the very same conditions
that influence you and every other
man you lxnow-it will depend on how
much he personally knows and wants
to know, and 1t will depend to some
extent, always, on how selfish he is.
Doctoring is a business. and all busi-
ness is bound to have this selfish side.
We should remember, too, that pa
tients are often very selfish toward
doctors. If ii is wrong for a doctor to
| think only of money, 1t is wrong for a
patient to forget to think of money.
Every doctor does much unheralded
work for humanity for which he asks
no pay whatever. If he is a big doc
! tor-not necessarily big in fees, or in
numbers of patients, but big in his
heart and brain-he is glad to be able
to do 1t. Big or little, he is doing it,
and doing 1t continually.
AS for bigotry, it is not something
that you can fasten on either big
people or little people alone. 1t makes
big man a little less big and little
man still smaller. A mistaken idea
of professional right often makes a
doctor seem bigoted. This is why it is
called professional bigotry." 1t hurts
the individual doctor more than it
hurts anyone else. The bigotry that
really hurts-no matter whose bigotry
it isis not this bigotry of business.
but the kind that has its doors and
windows closed to the free air of