Mark Twain's Speeches

by Mark Twain

GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,—I am glad to be among my own kind to-night. I was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally as deadly a profession. It wasn’t so very long ago that I became a member of your cult, and for the time I’ve been in the business my record is one that can’t be scoffed at.

As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people. I have always had a good deal to do with burglars—not officially, but through their attentions to me. I never suffered anything at the hands of a burglar. They have invaded my house time and time again. They never got anything. Then those people who burglarized our house in September—we got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been sorry ever since. They did us a great service they scared off all the servants in the place.

I consider the Children’s Theatre, of which I am president, and the Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the country. This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives which otherwise would have been lost.

I have been practising now for seven months. When I settled on my farm in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled—and since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled still. This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression on my community. I suppose it is the same with all of you.

I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School. I am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can.

Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country district has its disadvantages, but in my case I am happy in a division of responsibility. I practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a sexton, and an undertaker. The combination is air-tight, and once a man is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him.

These four of us—three in the regular profession and the fourth an undertaker—are all good men. There is Bill Ferguson, the Redding undertaker. Bill is there in every respect. He is a little lukewarm on general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp. Like my old Southern, friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere.

Then there is Jim Ruggles, the horse-doctor. Ruggles is one of the best men I have got. He also is not much on general medicine, but he is a fine horse-doctor. Ferguson doesn’t make any money off him.

You see, the combination started this way. When I got up to Redding and had become a doctor, I looked around to see what my chances were for aiding in the great work. The first thing I did was to determine what manner of doctor I was to be. Being a Connecticut farmer, I naturally consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath.

Then I got circulating about, and got in touch with Ferguson and Ruggles. Ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but Ruggles kept saying that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he couldn’t see where it helped horses.