I confess that at first I was somewhat cast down by these pessimistic prophecies, for even a casual glance over any group of ordinary acquaintances shows only too much ground for such conclusions. But a more prolonged scrutiny of just such a casually selected group of acquaintances, and a little more searching inquiry into the matter has brought out facts which lead to more encouraging ideas.
In the first place, the doctors are scarcely correct when they assume that they have always been the repository of a wisdom which we laity have obstinately refused to take over from them. Comparatively speaking, it is only yesterday that the doctors themselves outgrew the idea that pills were the divinely appointed cures for all ills. So recent is this revolution in ideas that there are still left among us in eddies, out of the main stream, elderly doctors who lay very little of the modern fanatical stress on diet, and burn very little incense before the modern altar of fresh air and exercise. It seems early in the day to conclude that the majority of mankind will not take good advice if it is offered them, a sardonic conclusion disproved by the athletic clubs all over the country, the sleeping-porches burgeoning out from large and small houses, the millions of barefooted children in rompers, the regiments of tennis-playing adolescents and golf-playing elders, the myriads of diet-studying housewives, the gladly accepted army of trained nurses. We may not do as well as we might, but we certainly have not turned deaf ears to all the exhortations of reason and enlightenment.
Furthermore, beside the fact that doctors have been preaching “hygiene against drugs” to us only a short time, it is to be borne in mind that, as a class, they do not add to their many noble and glorious qualities of mind and heart a very ardent proselytizing fervor. It seems to be against the “temperament” of the profession. If you go to a doctor’s office, and consult him professionally he will, it is true, tell you nowadays not to take pills, but to take plenty of exercise and sleep, to eat moderately, avoid worry, and drink plenty of pure water; but you do not ever run across him preaching these doctrines from a barrel-head on the street-corner, to all who will hear. The traditional dignity of his profession forbids such Salvation Army methods. The doctors of a town are apt, prudently, to boil the water used in their own households and to advise this course of action to any who seek their counsel, rather than to band together in an aggressive, united company and make themselves disagreeably conspicuous by clamoring insistently at the primaries and polls for better water for the town. It is perhaps not quite fair to accuse us laity of obstinacy in refusing advice which has been offered with such gentlemanly reserve.