Life, 1914-07-30 · page 35 of 40
Life — July 30, 1914 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page combines a satirical editorial essay on doctors with period advertisements and a cigarette ad. **Main Content:** The essay "Best People: the Doctors" (continued) argues that doctors overestimate health's importance. The author contends life naturally produces doctors, not vice versa—citing Chinese civilization's success despite viewing doctors as "superstition." The piece mocks physicians for being sanctimonious about health rules they themselves violate (drinking alcohol despite warning patients against it). The satire suggests doctors magnify their calling's importance when people actually prioritize living fully over perfect health. **Advertisements:** Rameses cigarettes ("Aristocrat of Cigarettes"), Capewell nails, Roundby world tours, and Panama-Pacific Exposition housing occupy the remaining space—typical early 1915 commercial content. **Point:** The satire critiques medical paternalism and physician hypocrisy—a common Progressive Era complaint that professionals overreach their authority while failing to practice their own standards.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Best People: the Doctors (Continued from page 191.) 1s to keep us in order. When one realizes what advantages of influence and control the doctors have, the wonder is that they have not engrossed the whole business, Perhaps they would engross it if physical health was the chief end of man, But it is not. It is only an important detail of ¢; a preliminary more or less essen- tial to getting out of life what is in it. We ask of ministers to keep us out of hell; of lawyers to keep us out of court; of doctors to keep us out of Led (except in proper sleeping hours) and fit to go about our business. We are willing to give our health such at- tention as we can spare for it. We don’t aspire to be perfect models of salubrity. We are satisfied if we feel pretty well, and can enjoy life and get along with our business. The fault of the doctors, as a group, is that they magnify their calling and are apt to want to do more for us than we want The Aristocrat of Cigarettes RAMESES Largest Selling 20c Cigarette ram mt if dl whereas, really, health is a mere by- ministers are to conduct which the done, and to make the world healthier than it belongs to be. They are prone to feel that life is a product of health, get the best service and safety from “Capewell” nails. No nail compares with “The Capewell " for ing sud- dea strains, twists and pulls. It holds the shoe best. Not the cheapest nail regardless of quality but the best in the world at a fair price. On the market more than a quarter efacentury. Ask your shoer to use this brand. ROU N DBSe Seri sia THE and West incloding WORLD of hn, | Palestine, Siam, Philippines, North China, especially. WE, SET THE STANDARD with our “Tours E. Reasonable rates. FRANK C. CLARK, Tines Bolder, NEW YORE Panama-Pacific Exposition SAN FRANCISCO 1915 To Lease—Several high<less completely fur- nished residences with view of BALDWIN & HOWELL, 318 KEARNY STREET, S: Exposition. Appl: product of life. Life scrambles along anyhow. If it can~ produce good health it does, and if it can’t it gets along with such health as it can get. You would think that there could be no health and no life without doctors, so many rules they have laid down, so many dangers they have charted, so many remedies and precautions they recommend. But the truth is that life has produced doctors, not the converse, and enormous nations like the Chinese get along, not, to be sure, without any doctors at all, but with doctors so terribly mistaken in their methods as to be rather worse than none, In China doctors are four-fifths or more a superstition. Even doctors in this modern country are considerably a superstition—perhaps two-fifths, but that leaves them a splendid margin of usefulness. Doctors are not held so closely as laity considers consistent with their calling. They live rather more un- wisely than average intelligent people, working themselves to death when need calls in precisely the fashion that they reprove in their patients. Almost all doctors agree that alcohol people no good, but it is very unusual to find a doctor who is a tectotaller. That may be because they recognize that entertainment is conducive to well- being, or perhaps because they know instinctively that the errand one runs here is not so much the pursuit of health as of life, and that life goes more agreeably for timely relaxation of its tension, When a community has no doctor it gets one as soon as possible—a good one if it can; if not, a bad one. It needs at times the moral support of some one who professes to know what to do for a sick person. Doctors, of course, are with us to stay. The faith-healers will not run them out of business, neither will they run them- selves out of business by abolishing disease, But they will not take over the whole task of regulating the world. Intelligent as they are, very intelli- gent indeed, as some of them are, they are no more fit than other specialists to be the masters of life. They are servants, great servants, of the human race, and worthy of their hire, but does they are better servants by what they add to knowledge and hy what knowl- edge they diffuse than by contribution of over-many statutory rules to regu- late behavior, Martin, comicbooks.com