"But even if the public didn't take that sensible view of it, we have legislative methods by which the thing could be brought about without the public knowing anything about it. For instance, supposing somebody in Congress were to introduce an innocent little bill appropriating five hundred thousand dollars, for the erection of a residence for a United States Ambassador to the Commonwealth of California, for the avowed object of keeping somebody in San Francisco to see that Governor Johnson didn't declare war on Japan without due notice to the Navy Department, what could be simpler than the insertion in that bill of a little joker providing that from the date of the enactment of this statute the Department of Agriculture is authorized and required to expend the sum of twenty thousand dollars annually on the dissemination, through Congressional seed packages, of not less than one ounce per package of germs of assorted infantile and other comparatively harmless disorders, for the benefit of the medical profession? Taxidermists tell us that there are more ways than one to skin a cat, and the same is true of legislation.
"There's only one other way that I can see to bring the desired condition about, and that is to permit physicians to operate under the same system of ethics as that to be found in the plumbing business. If a plumber is allowed, as he is allowed in the present state of public morality, to repair a leak in such a fashion to-day that new business immediately and automatically develops requiring his attention to-morrow, I see no reason why doctors should not be permitted to do the same thing. Called in to repair a mump, let him leave a measle behind. The measle cured, a few chicken-pox left carelessly about where they will do the most good will insure his speedy return; and so on. Every physician could in this way take care of himself, and by a skilful manipulation of the germs within his reach should have no difficulty not only in holding but in increasing his legitimate business as well."
"Ugh!" shuddered Mrs. Pedagog. "You almost make me afraid to let the Doctor stay in this house a day longer."
"Don't be afraid, Madame," said the Doctor amiably. "After all, I'm a doctor, you know, and not a plumber."
"I'll guarantee his absolute harmlessness, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "We're perfectly safe here. It is no temptation to a doctor to sow the germs of disorder among people like ourselves who have reduced getting free medical advice to a system."
"Well," said Mr. Brief, the lawyer, "your plan is all right for the doctors, but why the Dickens don't somebody suggest something for us lawyers once in awhile? There were seventy thousand new lawyers turned out yesterday, and you haven't even peeped."
"No," said the Idiot, "it isn't necessary. You lawyers are well provided for. With one National Congress, and forty-eight separate State Legislatures working twenty-four hours a day, turning out fifty-seven new varieties of law every fifteen minutes, all so phrased that no human mind can translate them into simple English, there's enough trouble constantly on hand to keep twenty million lawyers busy for thirty million years, telling us not what we can't do, but what few things there are left under the canopy that a man of religious inclinations can do without danger of arrest!"