“Eh? But––nerves feel––”
“Nerves, Doctor, like all matter, are externalizations of human thought. Can the externalization of thought talk back to thought? No. You are still on the basis of mere human belief.”
At that moment the doctor leaned over and tapped upon the window to attract the attention of some one in the street. Carmen looked out and caught sight of a tall, angular man dressed in clerical garb. The man bowed pleasantly to the doctor, and cast an inquiring glance at the girl, then passed on.
“A priest?” inquired Carmen.
“Yes, Tetham,” said the doctor.
“Oh, is that the man who maintains the lobby here at the Capital for his Church? I’ve heard about him. He––well, it is his business to see that members of his Church are promoted to political office, isn’t it? He trades votes of whole districts to various congressmen in return for offices for strong church members. He also got the parochial schools of New York exempt from compulsory vaccination. The Express––”
“Eh? The Express has heard from him?” inquired the doctor.
“Yes. We opposed the candidate Mr. Ames was supporting for Congress. We also supported Mr. Wales in his work on the cotton schedule. And so we heard from Father Tetham. 184 He is supporting the National Bureau of Health bill. He is working for the Laetare medal. He––”
“Say, Miss Carmen, will you tell me where you pick up your news? Really, you astonish me! Do you know something about everybody here in Washington?”
She laughed. “I have learned much here,” she said, “about popular government as exemplified by these United States. The knowledge is a little saddening. But it is especially saddening to see our constitutional liberties threatened by this Bureau of Health bill, and by the Government’s constant truckling to the Church of Rome. Doctor, can it be that you want to commit this nation to the business of practicing medicine, and to its practice according to the allopathic, or ‘regular’ school? The American Medical Association, with its reactionary policies and repressive tendencies, is making strenuous endeavors to influence Congress to enact certain measures which would result in the creation of such a Department of Health, the effect of which would be to monopolize the art of healing and to create a ‘healing trust.’ If this calamity should be permitted to come upon the American people, it would fall as a curtain of ignorance and superstition over our fair land, and shut out the light of the dawning Sun of Truth. It would mean a reversion to the blight and mold of the Middle Ages, in many respects a return in a degree to the ignorance and tyranny that stood for so many centuries like an impassable rock in the pathway of human progress. The attempt to foist upon a progressive people a system of medicine and healing which is wholly unscientific and uncertain in its effects, but which is admittedly known to be responsible for the death of millions and for untold suffering and misery, and then to say, ‘Thou shalt be cured thereby, or not be cured at all,’ is an insult to the intelligence of the Fathers of our liberties, and a crime upon a people striving for the light. It smacks of the Holy Inquisition: You accept our creed, or you shall go to hell––after we have broken you on the rack! Why, the thought of subjecting this people to years of further dosing and experimentation along the materialistic lines of the ‘regular’ school, of curtailing their liberties, and forcing their necks under the yoke of medical tyranny, should come to them with the insistence of a clarion call, and startle them into such action that the subtle evil which lurks behind this proposed legislative action would be dragged out into the light and exterminated! To permit commercialism and greed, the lust of mammon, and the pride of the flesh that expresses itself in the demand, ‘Who shall be greatest?’ to dictate the course of conduct that shall shape the destinies of a great people, is to admit the failure of 185 free government, and to revert to a condition of mind that we had thought long since outgrown. To yield our dear-bought liberties to Italian ecclesiastics, on the other hand––well, Doctor, it is just unthinkable!”