“Never more than fifteen years, though contingent upon the age of marriage. The term limit, in years, is from forty to forty five.”
“How do parents invest their earnings?”
“According to individual tastes and preferences. As with you, many have beautiful homes, with extensive grounds, indulge in Art Galleries, Libraries, Theaters, or Conservatories, while others devote the later years to special sciences or enter the School of Physicians.”
“Then even this hygienic regime entails occasional illness?”
“Accidents will always attend immaturity and inexperience; Infinite Wisdom alone can insure perfect harmony; but our physicians are also a salaried class, who teach as well as heal. Ill health which incapacitates members of his families for daily usefulness, is recorded against the physician; and a succession of such reports count to his discredit, even to the extent of depriving him of his diploma. In such cases, he, through the advice of the sages, seeks a less responsible avocation, or one for which he is better qualified.
“We do not, like you, bribe our doctors to neglect their patients or retard their cure.
“Our medical course is in three departments: Chemistry, Magnetism and Materia Medica. The first concerns the elements and combinations forming the physical body of man. Magnetism teaches the application of these principles and elements to the upbuilding and repairing of the body, while in Materia Medica we are taught to locate and extract these required principles from the animal, vegetable and mineral world. We hope to be physicians, after a time.”
This wish was uttered with a deep joyousness that told of a riper understanding than is expressed when the Earth-born youngster, during a brief cessation from banister-sliding or somersault-turning, exclaims, “I am going to be a doctor—a lawyer—or a policeman,” and yet there was an enthusiasm that was almost a parallel.
“You have not mentioned lawyers.”
“We have none; yours are an outgrowth of dishonesty and cruelty; a finger pointing to dissolution.