•; / V 1 1- CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF The Erway Estate Cornell University Library PS 2041. D6 1922 The doctors :a satire i" '°"';,,|;5,i*}|:,';Sif 3 1924 007 905 890 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924007905890 THE DOCTORS A Satire in Four Seizures BY ELBERT HUBBARD PONE INTO A BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA ERIE COUNTY, STATE OF NEW YORK, MCMXXII Copyright 1909 ■ By Elbert Hubbard THE DOCTORS DRAMATIS PERSONAE Staff physicians Dr. Agnew Weir, superintendent of State Hospital Dr. Jean Charlcot, first assistant to Dr. Weir Dr. Abergrab Dr. Dibble Dr. Carter Dr. Doosey Dr. Dobbins Mrs. X, the mysterious patient Baby X, son of Mrs. X Miss Little ^ Miss Millman > Nurses Miss Cavanagh J Rev. Cecil Kelrusey, husband of Mrs. X Quirk Woodcuff, Esq., attorney for Mr. Kelrusey Dr. Dawson, the family physician Karl McCullough, a patient Prof. Bumball, a patient Uncle Billy Bushnell, man-of-all-work Mrs. Bushnell, wife of Uncle Billy Lucy Bushnell, Mr. and Mrs. Bushnell's grand- child Bill, a keeper First Patient Second Patient Third Patient Fourth Patient Fifth Patient Nurses, Keepers and Internes All crazy — ^but only a part of the time THE DOCTORS ei ACT ONE ^ Scene: State Hospital. Office of Superintendent Dr. Agnew Weir, the noted Neurologist. Wheel-chairs, scales, skull on shelf, skeleton in corner. Enter Dr. Jean Charlcot, first assistant to Dr. Weir ; nurses in room, others enter. Dr. Charlcot has close-trimmed pointed beard, spectacles, and wears a spotless white suit. A dozen nurses in all, dressed smartly in nurses' costumes, stand in row at atten- tion. Each nurse carries a pad and pencil. Dr. Jean Charlcot — ^Now look here, young ladies, if you are ever going to be really first-class nurses, you must never again put the pencil to your tongue. The bacilli of the saliva, even in a healthy person, infect the wood of the pencil, and the re- peated operation produces a toxin that may bring about very serious complications, especially when you loan your pencil to a patient. All pencils should be treated to an antiseptic bath, daily. Now you young lac^ies would better make a note to this 9 Page IP THE DOCTORS effect. [All of the nurses apply their pencils to their lips and write rapidly.] Dr. Charlcot — ^The next thing to which I call your attention is your carelessness about taking care of the record-blanks, which are in each patient's room. These should, as you know, contain a com- plete history of the case. Some of you have been keeping these blanks in the bureau that is in each room, instead of tacking them on the wall, or on the foot of the bed. There are serious objections to this plan. These blanks impress the patient and convince him that he is really sick. Then, for instance, one of you — I will name no names — very carelessly carried a record of one patient to the room of another, and left this record on the table. I came through and examined the record, and was about to prescribe, when I discovered that the patient in the bed was an old man, and the record called for a young woman. Such things to a physi- cian are very embarrassing. So, please see to it that they do not again occur. I also regret to say that some of you still take the temperature of different patients with the same thermometer, without sterilizing the instrument* Do not make it necessary for me to refer to this again. You will also remember that the secrets of the clinic are never to be revealed, even if you are married. Carefully count the sponges before an THE DOCTORS Page n operation is complete, for you remember how Dr. Waldop sewed up one in the cavity through the -carelessness of one of you not long ago. Sponges cost money. This of itself was not the worst — the secret leaked and was the talk of the long porch. These things form the sequelae of our honorable profession and must not occur. Now, if Miss Little and Miss Cola will remain, as I have some special work for them, I will excuse the rest. A Nurse — ^Doctor, Miss Cola is not here. You forget that she was operated on yesterday for appendicitis. Dr. Charlcot — Certainly ; how very forgetful of me — I am afraid I have incipient aphasia — and I assisted in the operation, too! But I believe all our nurses have had their appendixes removed now, so hereafter you should all have better health. Miss Little and Miss Cavanagh will remain. [Nurses file out, excepting Miss Little and Miss Cavanagh.] Dr. Charlcot — ^Miss Little, you will please look after the old gentleman in Room 23. He is a chari- ty patient, but that is no difference to us — give him just as close attention as you would a paid-in- advance. You have a supply of Dover powders. If you think he should be moved to Heart's Ease, let me know, and I will call the boys. You may go. [Exit Miss Little, leaving Miss Cavanagh and the Doctor alone. They stand and look into each others eyes, then fall into each other s arms.] Page 12 THE DOCTORS Miss Cavanagh — Oh Doctor, the microbes! — the microbes! In your lecture yesterday, you cautioned the nurses never to kiss anybody — Dr. Charlcot — ^That is professional advice, and pro- fessional advice is only a joke. Who 's afraid of microbes! [Kisses her.] Miss Cavanagh — Now, tell me why you wanted me to remain? Dr. Charlcot — So I could test this microbe theory! [Kisses her once more.] Miss Cavanagh — So I 'm sacrificing myself to science? Dr. Charlcot — ^To Hippocrates and Eros. Miss Cavanagh — (Innocently.) I did n't know they went together. Dr. Charlcot — Indeed they do — all doctors are great lovers. The practice of medicine is largely sexio- psychological. Miss Cavanagh — ^That is what Dr. Weir says about religion. Dr. Charlcot — Yes; that is where I got the idea. Pastoral calls and medical calls are very much alike. Miss Cavanagh — ^High hats, gloves, spectacles and whiskers are all impressive and therefore curative. Dr. Charlcot — Yes ; love and whiskers cure. Miss Cavanagh — ^And they sometimes — kill ? Dr. Charlcot — Surely so; the thing that cures can THE DOCTORS Page 13 kill if not rightly administered. But come now, and I '11 talk shop, and give you your orders. [Leads her to sofa, where they sit, the Doctor s arm around the nurse, her head on his shoulder. He examines her mouth closely.] Your labia, and also your alveolar processes, need treatment — [Proceeds very slowly to kiss her, when the door opens and another young doctor, all in white, enters. Miss Cavanagh starts, but is held by Dr. Charlcot.] Dr. Charlcot — ^Don't mind him — it 's only George — he understands these peculiar cases ! Dr. George Carter — Say, Jean, I obeyed orders and put that patient on the table at exactly nine o'clock — it is now nine-thirty and we ought not to keep him under much longer — ^you better come along — Dr. Charlcot— I know, but don't you see I am busy! Dr. Carter — Certainly, but your present patient will safely survive for further operations — Dr. Charlcot — ^There now — don'jt give advice to your superiors. [Smiling.] All right, George, I'll be with you in a minute [Waves him away.] — ^You see, dear little titmouse, I wanted to tell you, a great case arrived at midnight last night. Neurotic with money! Female — ^a thousand dollars in advance. She would n't give her name, so I just entered her as Mrs. X — which means the unknown quantity. Miss Cavanagh — ^Were there then no commitment papers? Page 14 THE DOCTORS Dr. Charlcot — ^Her family physician is going to bring them today. You are to have charge of her, and besides your regular pay, you get ten dollars a week from the woman's husband — see! Dr. Weir called me up last night to ask what nurse was free, and I named you [Rubs his whiskers on her face.] because you were the only one I could think of. Oh, microbes— I guess not! Well, I put the rich lady under — blessed be morphine — ^with the trusty hypodermic. She fought like a wildcat. She was talking about her baby or something — and now — yes, she is to be here at exactly ten o'clock — in five minutes there is to be a consultation of the staff. I '11 go and tell George that we have decided not to operate on that man. He '11 probably be well by tomorrow, anyway. You tidy up the room a bit. Run to Heart's Ease and get those flowers some silly relative sent there yesterday. It will help the looks of the room — ^push those chairs back — ^see! Place two books and some magazines on the table. Good-by, little one — there now--you are cured. You owe me a thousand dollars for a treatment, and I '11 have to trust you and take it out in — Miss Cavanagh — [Tidying the room.] Microbes ! Dr. Charlcot — Osculation ! [Looks out of door.] They are coming down the hallway now ! [Enter attendant pushing wheeled chair in which is seated a woman. Her face is very white, her eyes c^losed, head fallen THE DOCTORS Page is forward, as if in a stupor. Her hands are strapped to arms of chair. Her feet strapped to a footrest. A broad band of leather holds her chest and another is buckled around her throat. Two other male attendants, burly and strong, one in a flannel shirt and corduroy breeches, follow behind. Five doctors straggle in from different entrances. All look alike, — Vandyke beards, but they represent all sizes and shapes, tall, slim, fat, — all have high foreheads and wear glasses. They glance at patient carelessly and distribute themselves. One doctor chucks a nurse under the chin and tells her a funny story.] Dr. Abergrab — ^Where 's Weir? Dr. Charlcot — Oh, he went down-town to the sta- tion to meet the case's family physician. They should have been here by this time [Looks at watch.] — train must 'a been late. Dr. Doosey — Rather interesting [Points to patient.] — eh, Charlcot? Dr. Charlcot — ^Yes; wait until we unbuckle those straps, and you *U think so!— acute mania. Dr. Doosey — ^When did she blow, in? Dr. Charlcot — ^At midnight. Two deputy sheriffs brought her — look at the abrasion on her hands. They had her handcuffed, and would you believe it ! her hands are so small that she worked them out and rubbed most of the cuticle off in the operation. They couldn't help it. She was yelling for her baby, Page 1 6 THE DOCTORS and it took all Bill and I could do to give her a taste of the needle — is n't that so, Bill? Bill — ^The toughest woman I ever handled, and so little too, and you doctors know I 've managed a lot of bad ones. [Doctors loll, light cigarettes, look at magazines.] Dr. Dobbins — Why not unfasten her and lay her on the lounge? Dr. Charlcot — When it took about an hour to get her in the chair — I guess not! Dr. Dobbins — Say, boys, last week I was called over to Cohoesville in consultation. There were three of us, and it took us about five minutes to size the case up. Then we adjourned to the next room for consultation. " What has he got? " I asked by way of opening up the discussion. " Money! " said one of the doctors. The regular physician said other- wise. So we took a vote and decided — Dr. Charlcot — ^Not to operate? Dr. Dobbins — Right you are! [All laugh.] Dr. Abergrab — Did he get well ? Dr. Dobbins — Oh, I think he will, all right. He was merely suffering from overeating. Dr. Doosey — That reminds me of a fellow who came to our office once when I was with White. White looked the man over and decided it was cancer of the stomach and was incurable. You know what a brutal cuss White was — well, he up and told the THE DOCTORS Page 17 man straight that he was up against it. There was no money in the case, anyway. " You '11 die in three months from today," said White. The chap was so astounded that White started to soften it down a little by adding, " But death is the common lot of all. We are living under a sentence of death, with an indefinite reprieve — close up your affairs and get ready to go. I '11 give you a bottle of medicine that will relieve you of pain if it gets too severe." So White gave the fellow a quart bottle of sedative stuff dissolved in cheap alcohol, and bowed him out. Well, the patient got to the gate, and then we saw him coming back, swinging the bottle by the neck. He slammed the bottle on the stone steps and it broke into a thousand pieces, and we heard the rogue yell to White to go to a place that does n't exist. And off he went! Dr. Charlcot — ^And got well ! Dr .Doosey — Right you are! He got well, and White used to meet him on the street, but always cut him cold. White said he was a man you could n't depend on. And the strange part is that White got blood- poisoning from that little prick of a needle, and croaked. The fellow who drove the hearse was the man with the " incurable disease! " [Dr. Charlcot approaches patient and places his ear to her chest and listens, looks around, smiles and speaks.] Page 1 8 THE- DOCTORS Dr. Charlcot — She has no squeegee of the heart — perfectly normal ! Dr. Dobbins — She 's the kind that gives the other fellow a squeegee! Dr. Doosey — ^That 's so — age twenty-eight in June. She has a history, I '11 bet you. Dr. Charlcot — ^Take her temperature, Miss Mill- man. [Miss Milltnan, a nurse, whips out thermome- ter, wipes it carefully, pries the woman s mouth open and takes her temperature.] Very interesting case, gentlemen. Paranoia, bordering on melancholia, probably cocaine habit— one baby and no more — nervous, irritable, fussy — the kind that gives work to us honest sons of Hippocrates. Dr. Doosey — ^Honest, more or less ! Miss Millman — ^Her temperature is ninety-six ! Dr. Charlcot — Oh, she is not suffering. [He pries open the lid of one of her eyes and examines the eyeball carefully with a hand-glass.] She pretends to be in a stupor — the shrewdness of a paranoiac is past belief. Where is the aqua fortis? Nurse— I '11 get it for you, Doctor. Dr. Charlcot — The female mind is sorely given to deceit, and the man who can tell when a woman is honest is a sure rara avis. In my opinion — ^purely unprofessional, mind you — the only good woman is a dead one. THE DOCTORS Page 19 Dr. Doosey — ^Then you surely have helped a lot of women to be good. Nurse — ^Here is the aqua fortis, Doctor. Dr. Charlcot — [Taking bottle and uncorking it.] Now, gentlemen, you will witness a proof of my diagnosis — the woman is shamming! [He holds the bottle to her nose. She moves her head, shuffles to free her feet, writhes in her chair. Her eyes open and gaze helplessly about.] Mrs. X — [The Patient.] Please — ^will — ^not some of you kind people release my hands ? Dr. Charlcot — On only one point was I wrong — I thought she would say, " Where — am — I? " and, " Who — brought me here? " Mrs. X — ^You do not look like unkind folks ! Please free just my hands — my hands — and I will endure the test, although you must know I am not insane. Dr. Charlcot — ^You see, friends, there is one of the symptoms — the patient always pretends he is not insane ! Mrs. X — I am not insane! Dr, Charlcot — If she was n't insane, why would she be here? Mrs. X — ^That is what I would like to know. Will —you free my hands? They are growing numb. Dr. Charlcot — You see! She wants to exercise her hands. She exercised them on me all right, last night ! Page 20 THE DOCTORS Mrs. X — ^Was I violent — I am sorry! Dr. Charlcot — She was worse than violent — ^she was a she-wildcat! Mrs. X — ^Was I violent before you treated me with violence? Dr. Charlcot — ^Look at my face! [Shows imaginary scratches on face.] Dr. Abergrab — It 's a dirty, bad face you have, but that is Nature's fault — it 's no worse than usual. Mrs. X — I did not intend to hurt any one! Dr. Charlcot — ^There it goes! She wants to argue, you see, and do it all over — Dr. Doosey — Oho! I think I hear Dr. Weir's car- riage — [Looks out of window.] Yes ; he 's at the door — but he 's alone. Dr. Charlcot — ^Well, we will let Dr. Weir take charge of this consultation — I hardly suppose we can call it a clinic. [Enter Dr. Weir — smooth-shaven — aged thirty — intel- ligent, gentlemanly, calm. Nurses fly around to take his hat, overcoat and medicine-case.] Dr. Weir — Oh, it is too bad to keep you all waiting — but the train was a little late. And then Dr. Dawson, the family physician, did not come, after all. Instead he sent a telegram saying it was only a case of ner- vous prostration, with Christian Science illusions — Nurses and Doctors — Christian Science!! [Tittering and talking in undertone.] ^ iL J>octor S^nshme— His M^edicine is -,, , Always 3afe t ■ ,t ~. i 'f' mmmm ■y:^ty:xr^'^'^^ • .r ■ X \- ;«' V x-' ,.-• ■ ,; i' r.- .y ■ -J i-^r * ./. ' ■y-- fc-* ill \ I - ^M: .-w •:::^.-^ ■,■ ^A-i ' '-r 'V ^ '! \,.. \l ' ^ -I ; .'-4 : '' /-^ ^.-■•y • N I ,' THE DOCTORS Page 2/ Dr. Doosey — ^Which is neither Christian nor scien- tific! [Smiles.] Dr. Weir — ^But where is our patient ? [Looks around.] Oh, in the chair — ^strapped — the chair — as bad as that! [Woman has again relapsed into stupor — eyes closed, head pitched forward. Dr. Weir looks at her and gently raises her head.] Dr. Weir — I am Dr. Weir, lady. Will you open your eyes for me? — ^There, that is right. You have no fever, your skin is moist and Mfediclis / .^^•."•*.;i- ■^■„ ■ J Z)^. ^., -:■ THE DOCTORS Page 29 Second Patient — ^The wind is East. Third Patient — ^Here 's a pretty warm one, Prof- essor: Preachers are paranoiacs, suffering from Meddlers' Itch. Second Patient — ^Doctors are self-deceived hypo- crites, drunk on their own dope. Fourth Patient — ^Lawyers are yeggmen, educated to a point where they know how to steal things accord- ing to law. Karl McCullough — ^That is where my old college chum, Crusoe, in his Monkey-house diversions fell down — ^he should have consulted a lawyer and learned how to pinch things legally. Chorus of Patients— Oh, aw, bah, booh, rotten, rotten ! Second Patient — ^Lawyers are men who get bad men out of trouble and good men in. Third Patient — Court-houses are places where jus- tice is dispensed with. Fourth Patient — ^But in New York — First Patient — ^New York is a city of sickening smells — of narrow streets — of burrows underground made by human moles. New York is lunacy, noise and dust in partnership. Prof. Bumball — [Writing.] Wait a bit, and let me get that down. Second Patient — Get this down. Professor: New York is motion that has lost its sense of direction. Page 30 THE DOCTORS It is a fireless grate in a banqueting-room the morn- ing after — it smells of dead cigarettes, stale beer and pachouli. Third Patient — ^A New York business man is a wooden Indian with a high fever — ^he never sees the sunlight, nor the starlight, nor the violets on the south side of a rotting log — nor — Uncle Billy Bushnell — ^A New Yorker here once asked me which cow gave the buttermilk. Second Patient — ^And another asked me if when I milked did I sit down in the meadow and whistle for the cow to back up. First Patient — ^Was that the one who stole Uncle Billy's hatchet for a souvenir? Uncle Billy — Yes; and I told him to produce it! " I 've buried it," he said. " Dig it up in the inter- ests of amity," says I, "or I '11 sting you with a harness-tug." Second Patient — All New York folks are souvenir fiends — they just have the steal microbe. First Patient — ^Were you ever in New York, Uncle Billy? Uncle Billy — Once — I went to the Waldorf. The clerk says, " I 'm full! " I answered, " I see you are." He says, "Our rooms are all taken." I says, " Then I '11 double up with one of the boarders! " He said, "We can't cook for you." I said, "I '11 THE DOCTORS Page 31 get my meals at Mrs. Child's flap-jack foundry — they say she is the very best cook in New York! " Second Patient — Get this down, Professor: New York has no love of music, she is merely intoxicated with foreign names — ^Dagos, Swedes and Polacks. Even a prize-fighter, in New York, has to hail from Australia, New Zealand, or Borneo. In New York, poets write advertisements, musicians play for stomachs in cafes, great painters work at house decoration. To attract a New Yorker, things must shine, dazzle and have the splendor of gilt, tinsel and paper flowers. A vast soulless thing is New York — and New York lawyers are the worst on earth. One of them sent me here. First Patient — But lawyers are necessary! Karl McCullough — ^Will the dear gentleman kindly enlighten us by telling us why? Second Patient — In order to protect us from law- yers! First Patient — ^The wonder is that lawyers are as good as they are, when they have always had half the swag and none of the disgrace. Second Patient — You must have been a law-wolf yourself! First Patient — [Proudly.] I was educated for the legal profession. Karl McCullough — And landed in an insane-asy- lum! Page 32 THE DOCTORS First Patient — I came here of my own accord. Karl McCullough — At last we have found an honest lawyer ! [Uncle Billy is all this time busy at work, paying no attention to talk, showing women patients how to pot plants.] First Patient — I am here to study sociology — I am writing a book called, ' ' How to Reform the World ! ' ' Karl McCullough — Put me down for a copy. First Patient — ^Half-calf? Second Patient — Sheep. Karl McCullough — Or full goat! Prof. Bumball — [Writing rapidly.] I '11 Boswellize you all ! First Patient — [Excitedly.] What 's that? Prof. Bumball — I '11 send your names clattering down the corridors of time. Karl McCullough — ^Like a tin kettle to a dog's tail ! Chorus of Patients — Oh, aw, bah, booh, rotten, rotten ! Karl McCullough — Hear the critics croak! First Patient — All the wit you have, you borrowed from Mrs. X ! Karl McCullough — Oh, listen to the anvil chorus! First Patient — Before she came you had melancho- lia! Second Patient — And dementia Americana! Third Patient — And acute gumwillies. THE DOCTORS Page 33 Karl McCulhugh — I admit that Mrs. X. cheered me up a little, and then I took charge and cheered you all up! First Patient — Oho! — oho! Karl McCullough — I pulled you out of the muck of your minds. Second Patient — But she rescued you ! Karl McCullough — ^All right — true — I never saw a smile here until she came. First Patient — She got permission to set us to work. Second Patient — ^That 's so! We were all porchers until she came! Third Patient — Just sitting around thinking of our troubles. [Enter Dr. Weir and Mrs. X. They are walking slowly and talking earnestly.] Mrs. X — Sanity lies in service. Dr. Weir — So you think that with right employ- ment we could do away with all medicine! Mrs. X— Certainly, yes. Man is a creative animal. The hands must be employed, otherwise the mind turns in upon itself. [Mrs. X and Dr. Weir sit down and work with the patients at potting plants.] Dr. Weir — I see; you would seek at once to get the patient busy at something. Mrs. X — ^Even if it is only stringing colored beads. Dr. Weir — You already have set some of the pa- tients working worsted mottoes on cardboard. 1 Page 34 THE DOCTORS laughed when I saw that — ^Dr. Charlcot showed it to me and asked, " What good will this do? " Mrs. X — ^And what did you tell him? Dr. Weir — ^That I would ask you! Mrs. X — Inasmuch as you know already! Dr. Weir — ^Yes, I know ; but I did not know I knew until you told me. You vitalize my thought. Mrs. X — It is the Kindergarten Idea. These people are children — ^some haven't even the mind of a two-year-old babe. Froebel began his work with colored worsted balls, and to h^ve the child dis- tinguish between colors was the first lesson. Then to roll the ball, and afterwards to catch it was the beginning of their play — Dr. Weir — ^And you would do that here? Mrs. X — Yes; with your permission, of course. I would introduce simple games. Work, play and love would be my medicines! Dr. Weir — You certainly have my permission to do anything you wish. Mrs. X— [Smiling.] Even if I am but a patient? Dr. Weir — ^Never mind what your position is. You are the most helpful influence that ever came to this place. Mrs. X — If I can be of service to people, it is all I ask. Dr. Weir — You are helping me. I am a physician by education — all my reading is in the line of medi- THE DOCTORS Page 3$ cine. Outside of that I am helpless. Now, you just mentioned Froebel — ^he was the Kindergarten man — but beyond that one fact, I know nothing. What was his first name? Mrs. X — ^Friedrich — ^he was born in Seventeen Hundred Two, and died in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-two. Dr. Weir — I suppose he was a highly educated man? Mrs. X — ^Not in the college sense — in fact, he was not a college graduate ! Dr. W'eir— Indeed! Mrs. X — In truth, during his life Froebel never quite escaped the taunt that he was not an educated person. That is to say, no college had ever sup- plied him an alphabetic appendage. He had been a forester, a farmer, an architect, a guardian for boys and a teacher of women, but no institution ever said officially that he was fit to teach! Dr. Weir — ^And he taught through play? Mrs. X — ^By utilizing the propensity to play, and conserving the happy moments. He never met one tantrum with another. Dr. Weir — ^And we never will here again — violence has gone from this institution as long as I am here! Mrs. X — Good! Joy is the greatest healing princi- ple known. Good news is the one thing that cures — the thought of good — that God is on our side — that we are linked to the race through love of one! Page 36 THE DOCTORS Dr. Weir — ^Through love of one? Mrs. X — Yes; when we are right with one, we are right with all. Dr. Weir — ^And so Froebel died successful? Mrs. X — ^For a time he succeeded. And then — then — ^he was seventy years old and filled with enthusiasm and hope as never before. His ideas were spreading — ^success, at last, was at the door, he had interested the women and proved the fit- ness of women to teach — ^his mothers' clubs were numerous — love was the watchword. And in the midst of this flowering time, the official order came without warning, apology or explanation, and from which there was no appeal. The same savagery, chilled with fear, that sent Richard Wagner into exile crushed the life and broke the heart of FriedrJch Froebel. But these names now are the glory and pride of the land that scorned them. Men who govern should be those with a reasonable doubt concerning their own infallibility, and an earnest faith in men, women and children. To teach is better than to rule. We are all children in the Kindergarten of God. Dr. Weir — Why should n't a hospital like this be a school ? Mrs. X—\t should — Dr. Weir — And it shall — with ypur help! Mrs. X — You have it! *^W^" \:jn'v*; .-•t,-',/r •#^. ' ^^ ^^^^:^>--<^.^ .;^,:;S:-,.:.^^i^ \ ■.''.■■■■%'■ •'«!■'* f '■^■r' \ '^:%k:~:^ .A ,-k < it A ■\'' »>■< -.IN.. .V," A 'i''? ^.^•^'-..'V. I "; f./'-Xsi>r' >'Vi '■""'■ *'*- i*M-^'H. ,» syiripatily^since : s /- ^%«'t" i THE DOCTORS ^ Page 37 Dr. Weir — I 've known the tmth, but really I never knew how to apply it until you came. Mrs. X — [LMUghing.] In handcuffs. Dr. Weir—Sent from God, even if the devil brought you. Mrs. X — ^To couple up our knowledge with life is the thing. There is where the learned men go wrong. Now, a few years ago I visited John Dewey's school. He had the Kindergarten Idea and had extended it to the higher grades ! Dr. Weir — Tell me how did he do it! Mrs. X — Oh, by taking children of very rich people and overcoming the disadvantages of civilization. Karl McCullough — Civilization is caused by a bacillus ! Dr. Weir — ^Fine, Karl ! But John Dewey, perhaps, has found the opposing bacillus that holds it in check! But about his school? Mrs. X — Oh, nothing; only he sets everybody to work, and then they laugh, play, and talk and have a good time — Karl McCullough — In school ? Mrs. X — Yes ; I went into one of the rooms once where they were making homespun. The children were dyeing, spinning and weaving the material— and all talking — Dr. Weir — ^Does n't John Dewey say that children shall be seen and not heard? Page 38 THE DOCTORS Mrs. X — ^Never — a. child is just like a grown-up: if he knows anything he wants to tell it. Karl McCullough — ^And nobody really knows a thing until he tells it to some one else ! Dr. Weir — Happy is the man who has somebody to tell things to! Karl McCullough — ^And do things for! Mrs. X — Well, I watched the children at work, and standing right alongside of me was a freckle- faced boy with red hair. He did n't look very bright to me, and I was going to ask him a question, when he asked me one. He looked up at me and said, ** Do you know how much a bushel of wheat weighs? " Karl McCullough — And did you?, Mrs. X— No; do you? Karl McCullough — ^For the life of me I can't tell whether it is fifty-six pounds or Seventy-two. Mrs. X — ^Well, I could n't either, and so I smiled and said, "Oh, a bushel of wheat weighs about a hundred pounds! " Karl McCullough~Did the bluff go? Mrs. X — No, it didn't go. He next asked, " How much does a bushel of oats weigh? " And I said, " Little boy, a bushel is a bushel, no matter what it is." Karl McCullough — ^Did that work? Mrs. X — No — it did n't work. The lad then picked THE DOCTORS Page 39 up a cotton boll out of a big basket and held it up to me and asked, " Do you know the difference between wool and cotton? " And I said, "Of course I do!" and he said, "Well, why do moths eat wool and not cotton? " Karl McCullough — ^Did you know? Mrs. X — No ; and I said I did n't and the fellow answered, "That's right, if you don't know, you ought to say so, first thing — it is no dis- grace to be ignorant, but it is awful bad to pretend to know when you don't." Dr. Weir — ^What would become of us doctors if we acknowledged we did n't know! Mrs. X — ^Then that little fellow asked me what cotton was worth a pound, what State produced the most cotton and what the most wool. To all of which I simply replied, " I don't know." He looked at me in amazement — somebody had told him I was an educated person. I just looked at him and guessed what he was thinking: " I '11 ask her one more question— and then I '11 let her go." Karl McCullough— Wdl, what did he ask? Mrs. X — ^He asked if I knew who Eli Whitney was. Dr. Weir— And did you? Mrs. X — ^No; I couldn't just recall! Karl McCullough — I know who he was — ^he was a member of President Cleveland's cabinet. Dr. \lk^eir— Indeed! Page 40 THE DOCTORS Karl McCuUough — I used to know Cleveland — he was sheriff of Erie County, New York, when I lived at Buffalo ! First Patient — ^And he knew you, being sheriff! Karl McCullough—l didn't say he knew me — I just knew him! Second Patient — ^That is better! Mrs. X — ^Well, when I confessed that I did n't know who Eli Whitney was, that little boy ex- plained that he was the inventor of the cotton-gin, and that the cotton-gin was a machine for taking the seeds out of cotton, and the invention of that machine doubled the value of cotton, because before that all the seeds had to.be picked out by hand— Dr. Weir — ^How very interesting ! Mrs. X — ^And as he told me he was picking the seeds out of that cotton boll. He had a whole hand- ful of cotton-seeds that he held out toward me. " Do you know what they do with cotton-seed? " he asked. " No, " said I. " Well, I '11 tell you if you never tell anybody." " I never will," I answered. And his answer was that they make olive-oil of 'em. Dr. Weir — ^That is the way to teach — by object- lessons and by doing things. And it is also the way to cure a mind diseased and pluck from memory its rooted sorrow ! Mrs. X — I 'm glad you think so— THE DOCTORS Page 41 Dr. Weir — ^But there is my carriage — I 'II have to go. There is barely time to catch my train for New York. How the time flies! There was to be an operation down there tomorrow, but I 'm going to try mind-cure, work-cure and the love-cure first. Mrs. X — [Shaking hands.] Splendid! Dr. Weir — Good-by, everybody! Karl McCullough — Good-by and good luck, doctor! [Exit Dr. Weir.] Mrs. X — [To new patient.] Come now, try that — you put the dirt in first, just so — New Patient — [Woman.] Yes — I — I think I can — I will try. Do you know, you are the first person who has said a loving word to me for a year ! Mrs. X — Oh, but, of course, we love you — and we are all going to help you. When we forget ourselves in useful effort we are well ! First Patient — God never intended any one to be sick! So long as we love we serve, and no man is useless while he has a friend. Karl McCullough — I guess that is so — ^when I get to hating somebody I have 'em. Mrs. X — ^We can get along without being loved, but we can not live long unless we love others. Karl McCullough — ^Love is for the lover. Mrs. X — ^And work is for the worker. Karl McCullough — ^And doctoring is for the doctor. First Patient — Doctors cure nobody here. Only one Page 42 THE DOCTORS out of every fifteen who come here is discharged, and he gets well in spite of the doctors. The rest die or become institutionalized. Mrs. X— What is that? First Patient — ^Why, you simply become human punk and cease to be a living soul. Sorrow and idleness eat your heart out. If you do not die you become a dessicated being that neither enjoys nor suffers. That is what an institution does for you. You no longer live, you just exist. Mrs. X — See here, friends, let us look to ourselves for health, and not to the doctors. First Patient — ^But weren't you consulting with Dr. Weir, just now? Mrs. X — Just in a friendly way. Second Patient — I hope you were advising him. Mrs. X — People who are forever taking note of their sensations and who send for a doctor if they feel badly, instead of figuring out in their own minds why they feel badly and avoiding the cause, are candidates for the ether-cone. The average length of life would be increased immensely if we would just begin to "Know thyself." As it is now, we depend on the doctors to cure us if we are sick, and if worst comes to worst, we are fully prepared to go to the hospital and have the surgeon remove the inflamed organ. Would n't it be better to so live that no inflammation would follow? THE DOCTORS Page 43 Disease comes only to those who have been pre- paring for it. Disease is a sequence postponed by Nature as long as she can, and then she becomes discouraged. Beginners on the bicycle run into the object they seek to avoid. The doctor and the hospital are in our minds, we think disease, not happiness and health. Health is within our reach — it costs nothing — only the effort which soon grows into a pleasurable habit. Why not acquire the Health Habit? Here is the formula: First: Deep breathing in the open air with your mouth closed. Second: Moderation in eating — ^simple dishes — Fletcherize. Third: Exercise two hours in the open each day, walking, working in the garden, or playing. Fourth: Sleep eight hours in a thoroughly ven- tilated room. Fifth: Drink all the water between meals you care to. Sixth: Don't bother to forgive your enemies — just forget them. Second Patient — God never did a better thing than when he chased Adam and Eve out of the Garden and said, "Children, get busy! " Third Patient— Work is the great blessing. Page 44 THE DOCTORS Fourth Patient — That is so. The problem of civil- ization is to eliminate the parasite. Second Patient — Do away with the serving class. Mrs. X — ^The way to do away with the serving class is for all to join it. First Patient — Idle people are never well, nor happy. Second Patient — Success lies in human service. Mrs. X — Quite true. Over in London a few years ago I was invited to a big banquet — Several Patients — Oh, tell us about it! Mrs. X — ^Well, there is n't much to tell, save that I was taken in to dinner by the Duke of Yarmouth. First Patient — ^How charming! Second Patient — Was he handsome? Mrs. X — Quite the reverse — ^his face was all broken out. Third Patient — Were there no bars on the windows ? Several Patients — ^Rotten, rotten ! Mrs. X — ^He ate too much, and smoked too much and did not exercise enough. Karl McCulbugh — ^No gentleman should smoke more than one cigar at a time. First Patient — And no gentleman should give the wood-pile absent treatment. Second Patient — You must live like a poor man, or it 's you for locomotor ataxia — Third Patient — ^And your children for the nut college. ^' •'^'.■.> I Vivisection i^ oi;^!^ Vllliial»|.in 'givin|f facility in ctfttiJI^ into the Kumait^siibject ''^^,-'vvMf^*'-5'v^ «/^ ♦• r , ■ .;/ Uj r. ' "1 ■*, ' '■ ;*' ■* ' , '■■ ";''A.-^ . ' y ■ v''^ - *•„ >"■» '-, . „ • >■' / y , jj , ' »^:>"' ' : • ■ ; ~ * ;* • . ?■• »K, •»■-' />•' \. v^^-. »>i4 '4 , THE DOCTORS Page 45 Mrs. X — Well, the Duke and I got into a little argument about economics in America — I was trying to tell him about what a wonderful country this is. First Patient — And what did he say? Mrs. X — ^He said, "Aw, now, me deah cheeild, but in America, you know, you have no Leisure Class, you know, you have no Leisure Class! " " Yes, we have," I answered; "we call them Hoboes." Then I smiled and he smiled, but I knew what I was smiling at, and he did n't know why either he smiled or I snickered. " Vay droll, " he said, " Vay droll — most amusing — most amusing! But what is a 'obo? " And I answered, "You are one!" First Patient — Splendid, splendid! Mrs. X — ^But I said it to myself — I never cast my jokes before swine. But I just thought, " Well, he is a hobo — ^he lives on the labor of others. He wastes, he destroys, he consumes — he produces nothing. Others have to work to support him! " First Patient — ^He had become irtstitutionalized ! Karl McCullough — ^Morally dead, dried and dessi- cated. Mrs. X — Yes; that is about it. To live we must keep at work. First Patient — ^Nine out of ten of the patients here have not been educated to do a useful thing, and when they come consider it smart to evade work. Page 46 THE DOCTORS Second Patient—That is why they come here. Third Patient — ^They need education and work, not medicine. First Patient — Since Mrs. X came, and set us to work, and talked to us — Second Patient — ^And loved us — Third Patient — Instead of operating on us — First Patient — ^We are well and happy. Second Patient — ^Happiness is our birthright! Third Patient — ^Health is the most natural thing in the world. Karl McCullough — ^Hear the phonographs ! [Smokes violently and bbws smoke on plants.] First Patient — ^Well, what if Mrs. X did say it first — we have made it ours ! Karl McCullough — Oh, I admit it is a beautiful world — but how about these doctors who give us ether and remove our pocketbooks? Prof. Bumball — ^And place our happiness in pickle? Fourth Patient — ^That Rest-cure is the worst! Fifth Patient — ^Heart's Ease is pijeferable! New Patient — [The woman who has just come in.] What is Heart's Ease? [Mrs. X and Uncle Billy confer and work, placing plants on shelves.] Fourth Patient — It is the room ?vhere they carry you when God is about to release you from the hospital. New Patient — I would not mind that! THE DOCTORS Page 47 Fifth Patient — ^But you sometimes go by way of the Rest-Cure. Karl McCullough — ^Which does n't cure. Fifth Patient — If it kills you it does. New Patient — ^But about the Rest-Cure? Fourth Patient — ^Well, the doctors make a pretense of holding a consultation, and then they order the Rest-Cure. That is, they put you to bed and strap you there. New Patient — ^Even if you are not sick? Fourth Patient — Certainly; but, you see, they decide that you are, officially you are sick, and just a little pill of cocaine, strychnine or opium — and you are out of your head. It is the easiest thing in the world to make a patient violent. And nobody knows when a person is sick here whether it is the effect of medication, harsh treatment, or from natural causes. You can scare a nervous per- son into dementia in a minute! New Patient — ^But, about the Rest-Cure — a doctor told me they were going to give It to me ! First Patient — ^Kill yourself first! That Rest-Cure means strapping you to a bed and keeping you there for six weeks. Second Patient — ^Your knowledge is academic, like an old maid's belief in the depravity of man. Third Patient — I 've tried it. They gave me the Rest-Cure two years ago. Page48 THE DOCTORS Fourth Patient — ^And you are here yet — Third Patient — I wish I could disprove it. Karl Md^ullough — ^There are two big, stout straps at the foot of the bed that buckle around your ankles. You can just move each foot a little way. A strap goes around your waist and fastens beneath the bed. Your hands are strapped out on the side, so you can't get them together. By reaching your neck around you can scratch your ear, but your hands can't reach the buckles and there you are. The first day you endure it. The second day you fear you are going to die. The third day you fear you will not die. Your cheeks bum — your eyes ache, every nerve in your body is sore. The fourth day you are stupid — ^you dream — you see things — you hear music. All they feed you is milk. After the fifth day you lose count of time : the days, the hours and the minutes are all alike. We note time only because the day is divided — on your back strapped to a bed your senses die. So there they keep you until you are only a shadow of a man. Hallucinations, illusions, fear, all go — even hope dies. Then they set to, and gradually bring you back to life. You are treated like an infant. The intent is to make a new being of you. The result is, that when you recover, you are back exactly where you started from. THE DOCTORS Page 49 New Patient — Do not some die under this treat- ment? Karl McCullough — Certainly they do — but -that is no difference. Edmund Burke said that lawyers were the only men not punished for their ignorance of the law. And I say that doctors are the only murderers who are not punished for murder. They kill people and do it legally. The Rest-Cure con- sists in making a man sick in order to kill him. In vaccination the doctors give you one disease to keep you from getting another. The Rest-Cure is a system of vivisection. New Patient — What is vivisection? Mrs. X — Vivisection is the act of cutting into the tissues of a living animal, in order to study the workings of the vital organs. The savages who tied their victim to a tree and shot arrows into him at a rate of two or three a day, were actuated by something beside cruelty — they were protecting their tribe by punishing its enemies. Archbishop Laud, Torquemada and Pope Alex- ander Borgia defended their Holy Faith by methods not less severe than those adopted by the savage. We kill the criminal to protect society. And so we kill thousands upon thousands of animals, first torturing them for days, weeks and sometimes months, in the name of human health Page 50 TUt DOCTORS and happiness. But motives are never found pure. Side by side with avowals of love, kindness and good will dwell tyranny, sophistry, cruelty and death. Otherwise, no Christian nation would ever have gone to war. Cruelty is always irrational, but it becomes rational when you couple it with a noble motive to give it excuse. The capsule is coated with sugar, but inside is the drug. Karl McCullough — ^That 's so. At a medical college in Chicago where I once attended, we always had on hand a cage containing a dozen or more dogs. We bought these dogs from the dog-catchers, authorized, and sometimes non-official. Never mind, we got the dogs — the acquisition aided in dispelling the monotony of existence. We were young, all had been hunters, and we craved a little excitement. We got the dogs all right. And it was the rule of the place that any dog could be redeemed on payment to the janitor of two dollars. This money bought food for the dogs, also more dogs. So we all owned a dog — some well-bred canine that we had bought with a price. But never were we allowed to bring our pets into the vivisect- ing-room, for the free dog, in sorne way sensing the true state of affairs, would begin to howl in agony, seemingly pleading for his unfortunate mate that THE DOCTORS Page $i was stretched, gagged and helpless, on the table. So the nale was established that any dog brought into the room should be forfeited and chucked into the cage. One day, a dog was brought in that had been oper- ated on the day before, his abdomen cut open, to expose the stomach. After the class, he had been stitched up and placed in a cage. Now he was brought in again, and we were to trepan his skull. The dog was not tied down, but a young man was holding him under his arm while the Professor was explaining what he was going to do. The dog was very weak, but still he could bark. The boy who held him tried stroking and petting him. Still the dog howled and seemingly turned his appeal from one to another, and at last fixed his glazed eyes on the Professor, crying for mercy. Then one young man blurted out, " Here, fellows, I can't stand this ! I '11 be one of four to give fifty cents and buy this dog's life! " Everybody laughed, but the Pro- fessor kindly and gently explained that the dog was already wounded and could not live anyway, other- wise he would be quite willing to accept the young gentleman's well-meant offer. I do not know whether the incident impressed any of the others as it did me — it would have been weakness to have followed up the idea — but the next day I cut the class in vivisection. Page 52 THEDOCTORS Mrs. X — ^The question is still unanswered: " Have dumb animals no rights scientific men should respect? " The worst effect of vivisection is not, I believe, the fact of the cruelty to the animal, but the evil reactionary effect on the man who prac- tises the business. Work is for the worker, art is for the artist, love is for the lover, and murder is for the murderer. The victim dies — the one who does the deed lives on. That poor wretch in the stocks suffered, but not so direly as did the children who were given opportun- ity to pelt him with mud. All cruelty and inhuman- ity react to the detriment of society. Nature is kind — ^she puts a quick limit on suffer- ing — perhaps the vivisectionist is right, that the animal does not really suffer much. But the fact is, the vivisector suffers, whether he knows it or not. He has immersed his hands in innocent blood, and instead of being the protector of the helpless, he has taken advantage of the animal's helplessness to destroy it, by means slow, complex, refined, prolonged and peculiar. Life has become to him cheap and common. Something divine has died out of his soul. Karl McCulbugh — ^The Rest-Cure is a species of vivisection ! [Enter Miss Little, the nurse, agitated, halts, hesi- tates, and then approaches Uncle Billy Bushneli] ■' ^\\ f ■ Defiance ofthe' MfcrobesV or His Mosi: IhnocentExperittiieiit ' \ % ?'^ -' * «. ^■..# '-':/,, '^•ImJ)} IS - ' In . J *.mS I : Ypii!: p^istmopr ■: K i «j^l til C.' ' ' 1; -W ^,^ Oritisyotifo^ .*'■. J. ^. (a * v., * ■/ ». '>,■ ■ *; THE DOCTORS Page 53 Miss Little — Oh, Uncle Billy! It is such a beautiful day, why don't you have your hoe-class out-of- doors — ^you know — let us all get out into the sun- shine! [Then to Uncle Billy alone,] Get them out, I say ; I must speak to you and Mrs. X alone — yes, let Karl McCuUough stay, too, and you, Mrs. X, I must see you! Uncle Billy — You act as if you had a touch of the hypos, yourself. It is evidently a psychosis ! Miss Little — ^Do not joke, please — this is serious! Send them out ! Uncle Billy — ^AU right, here we go — ^have your way ! [Louder.] Now everybody, out we go to the hoe- class — each get your hoe and out we go. Out into the sunshine, and please see that you do not hoe up all my cabbages this time— just tackle the weeds. [Laughter and commotion.] One, ;two, three. [Each person shoulders a hoe and files out, led by first and second patients, who mark time and assume military attitudes — leaving Karl McCullough, Miss Little, Uncle Billy and Mrs. X on staged Miss Little — It may cost me my place, but I '11 be true to my sex before I am to the doctors — Mrs. X — [Smiling.] Is it as bad as all that? Miss Little — ^Are you strong enough to bear bad news? Mrs. X — ^Anything, for haven't I already gone through everything? Page 54 THE DOCTORS Miss Little — ^Everything but the Rest-Cure — and now Dr. Charlcot has ordered that you shall have that! Mrs. X — [Blanching.] The Rest-Cure? Karl McCullough — ^Not while I have a drop of manhood's blood in my veins! [Attitude.] Uncle Billy — [Seizing a shovel.] The hell she shall have the Rest-Cure ! Mrs. A"— But why? Miss Little — ^Well, they say you have influenced the patients too much. And then you see — Mrs. X— Go on\ Miss Little — They have found out that your little boy is being taken care of by Uncle Billy's wife I Mrs. X — ^But that is outside the grounds, and this hospital doesn't control Mrs. Billy! Miss Little — Oh, but the tentacles of this institu- tion reach out a long way — we can't argue now. Karl McCullough — It is a condition confronts us, not a theory! Miss Little — ^Exactly so. Mrs. X — ^But Dr. Weir will not allow this. Miss Little — Oh, Dr. Weir has gone to New York and will not be back for a week. You know he looks after the finances and outside consultations, and can not give himself to details. Here is all there is about it: The order has been given, and I think Bill, the keeper, and two internes are looking for THE DOCTORS Page 55 Mrs. X, now. The people who sent her here — ^Dr. Dawson or somebody — with lawyers are to come to examine her — it 's a commission. I believe that is what they call it. As she is now, they must call her sane. But if she is strapped on a bed for a few days, her food taken away and repeated small doses of cocaine given her in the milk she drinks, she will be demented absolutely when the commission comes! Karl McCullough — And they are bound to prove her insane! Miss Little — ^Yes; they want to prove that she is unfit to look after her child — and then there is something about a divorce! Mrs. X — ^A divorce! Miss Little — Oh, I didn't mean to say anything about that — it is your present safety I was think- ing of! Mrs. X — A divorce! Miss Little — Oh, pardon me — ^but you were an actress before you married — the church people object to you — your husband — Mrs. X — ^My husband! Miss Little — ^A thousand pardons — I know nothing about it. I only overheard a lawyer talking to Dr. Charlcot in the office. I may be all wrong. But this I know, you are to be given the Rest-Cure — you will never survive it! Page $6 THE DOCTORS Mrs. X — [Dazed.] The Rest-Cure! Miss Little — ^Doctors do anything for money. They are the only men who are not responsible before the law. They lie to protect one another. Nurses all protect them: only I am a traitor — a traitor for you! They are coming — [Looks out of the window.] I see them coming across the lawn — Mrs. X — I will not run — I will fkce them! Karl McCullough — We will fight them! Uncle Billy — ^Here, hide under this box! [Lifts up big packing-box and pushes her under. Karl leaps on the box and using it as a platform begins to speak.] Karl McCullough — ^May it please the Court, I appear before you in defense of my profession — [Enter Bill, the keeper, and two internes in white suits.] First Interne — We are looking for Mrs. X. Karl McCullough — Silence in the Court — I appear before you — Second Interne — ^He 's an amusing cuss ! Karl McCullough — I appear in behalf of the stage. My heart goes out to the player-folk. They give more and get less than any other class of people who stand in Douglas three-dollar shoes. Very, very few of them ever acquire a competence. Their pockets are open top and bottom, and their hands go out to all of God's creatures in a desire to bless and benefit. THE DOCTORS Page 57 -- - ■ ■ They live so in their emotions and steamer-trunks that they seldom have time to sit back, become blase and munch the peanuts of success, or sip the soda that tends to cerebral flatulence. If there is a collec- tion to be taken to send some unknown lunger to Arizona, they fall all over themselves to come in on it, even if they have to borrow the money. If an ex- convict wants to go somewhere and get away from himself, they never dive into the past, but it 's, " Here you are, old man, and good luck to you! " They are on the wing, but as they fly, profession- ally or otherwise, they scatter smiles and the words that leave no heartaches. Always behind them is this phosphorescent wake, the luminous light of happiness — for others. And they sing, dance and play for us, even though their hearts may be burst- ing for grief. Their devotion to their work has given basis to those slanderous, pleocene pleasantries, say like this : A histrion approaches a lunch-counter and in a deep, villain's voice says, "Gimme a sandwich! " The man in the white apron asks, " Ham? " The histrion looks affronted, then grieved, but controlling his emotion, in a voice trembling with acerbity and rebuke slowly replies, " No, knave, no. You are wrong for once — only star parts in the legit." The party in the white apron handed out a tongue-sandwich. Page 58 THE DOCTORS The actors act all day long — of course they do. They are always playing to the gallery of their own cosmic selves. They are both the actors and the " house " — and out of it they surely get much joy. They are all children — they never grow up. The gods must love them, for they die young, no mat- ter how long they live. Their innocence, their hope, their gullibility, their fond and foolish belief that they are " on " when all the time rogues are playing them for maskinonge, would be funny if it were not pathetic. They all love books, but few own a bookcase. They all love art, but few possess a {Picture. Yet E. S. Willard, for example, always carries twenty choice volumes with him, and before he enters his room at the hotel, these books are placed on their portable shelf, and over them sits a little bronze bust of Shakespeare, while on the wall is an old framed en- graving. And so this mime makes himself believe that he is ever at home, and he points you to what he calls his " treasures " — the little shelf of books, the bust and one picture. There is a dear, volatile, enthusiastic girl by the name of Grace Hadsell who carried with her on her barnstorming tours a little plaster-of-Paris bust of Beethoven. Always and forever. East or West, on her dressing-table was her image of the great com- poser. It was her shrine — the shrine of art. One day THE DOCTORS Page jg the bust got broken, and the audience wondered what great sorrow was gnawing at the heart of Grace, the gracious and graceful. Yes, the players play for us, and just a little appre- ciation on our part fills their cup of joy to the brim. We ought to do more for them — and always we should remember that if they sometimes give us rotten plays, these plays were written by rotten playwrights to please a rotten public. The heart of the player is pure— ^or a deal more so than the hearts of the folks who piously pass him by on the other side. The Good Samaritan was cer- tainly a gentleman actor — ^he had time to give the poor fellow a lift. How my blood boiled the other day when it was stated that the name of Julia Marlowe was being used as a door-mat to further the ends of some rum- my rogue lawyer for a rum nobody client. The devil would n't use the soul of that attorney for a spit- toon. The whole charge was groundless, but the pain it must have caused this sensitive, sincere and honest woman — aye, there 's the rub. Julia Marlowe is a woman of worth, intellectually, morally, artistically. She has benefited and uplifted our ideals, and has given the Athenians a day of pleasure. Happily she is today alive and well and in the height of her power, and is doing better work than ever before. Once I saw her distributing or- Page 60 THE DOCTORS anges among a pungent and permeating mass of emigrants in the depot at Syracuse. Each tired, dirty, weary little dago got an orange, and a love pat, fearless of microbes, on the head; and weary mothers, speaking a foreign tongue, received a message in the language they understood— the love language of a common humanity — of an honest woman speaking to the mother heart. On their yel- low, listless faces grew two smiles where there were no smiles before. They understood! And Julia Mar- lowe in her brown suit was as indistinguishable and as beautiful as a quail in a stubble-field. Out upon that calloused crew who use the word " actress " as an epithet! The actress is a woman — usually a woman without a home. She lives in the glare of the lime-light. All of her actions are sub- jected to a blaze of criticism. But this I do believe, she holds her course as true to the eternal guiding stars as any class does or can. If at long intervals, in her heart-hunger and loneliness, she proves her humanity and relationship to Mother Eve, God in pity must look the other way and divert the atten- tion of Gabriel, his stenographer, to the beauty of the Pleiades, and the Comets shooting through the sky. God at least is a gentleman, and no man sees the thing he does not want to see. Surely, this must be so, for God is the Great Playwright, and we are all doing our little parts in His farce-comedy, called ^ 111 the tirtere$i§ cCtfealth! , » -^ *♦ I'or §evenity4«five Ceni«^na'th^ 4'' ^ -^ *i- *■ «■ -,A • ^ 11/ *" . » * '* ^'X* ■*- » ''f *, ■,.. ..^:- '--^:' t<^'-v:-^^ ,/''. '.km. / ■ :<•,.■,.•• ., ft '■ *■• ri 1* V: rv .;■/ I «§^ ■ V t y€:.^' ve fi| |r' " /^-^v : of W^ter f .'/,•'< ..„ .>»^--' ■^'■.>f /♦■ r ;^ ;^ Sunsiiiiie ;^ , /- . ' V^- :i '. i 1 ' / r*^ % 1 /> ■ 1 -y. •';,r-"■*! THE DOCTORS Page 6i Life. ' ' The play within theplay, and the players who play they play, and yet do not know they play, must minimize, for Him, the monotony of Paradise. Unlike the foxes that have holes, and the birds that have nests, the player-folk rest as they rush, dine at the house of Simon and are often crucified by those they seek to serve, and are buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea — ^not even owning a lot in the cemetery which they can call their own. [Uncle Billy works at putting plants on shelves, stopping now and then to listen to the speech. Bill, the keeper, and two internes confer with Miss Little. She takes them to the window and points across the fields. They sit down and listen to Karl's speech which goes on like Tennyson s brook.] First Interne — [Rolling and lighting a cigarette, inter- rupting Karl.] Well, Old Brutus chap, go it! If we knew half as much as you we would not be wasting our time here. Second Interne — Go it, old boy ! We will be back in about four hours to hear your peroration. [Exit Bill, the keeper, and two internes.] Karl MdCulhugh — ^I will not say, God bless the players, for He has and will. They have what they carry in their hearts, and that is all any of us have. Their hopes are of the stuff that dreams are made of, and their little life is rounded with a sleep. May they sleep well, and at the last Great Day may Page 62 THE DOCTORS they all have comps in Elysium. For surely, if the place is not peopled by the perfesh, I '11 cut it for a yap town, a jay outfit, and hie me to hell to enjoy the pyrotechnics and see the original Connellsville coke-ovens. Look you to our laurels, James, to our laurels, they are all we have, look you to them. Charon will trust us for the toll — if mayhap not, then we '11 do a turn for the passengers, and pass the tambourine. Miss Little~Oh, we are not out of trouble yet! [Wrings her hands.] Karl McCullough — [Jumps the off box, turns it over.] Here now, Mrs. X, get in the wheelbarrow, and Uncle Billy can wheel you over to his house, at least. You are then out of the grounds — and as soon as it is dark you must put distance betwen you and this hellish place! [They put her itx the wheelbarrow and cover her quickly with straw.] Miss Little — I '11 be at your house. Uncle Billy, at ten o'clock. You better hide her in the barn until then. Karl McCullough — I '11 be there too. Uncle William, in a star part. Miss Little — ^Mr. McCullough, we will join the hoe- class — out in the sunshine — ^good-by and good luck, Uncle Billy! Uncle Billy — I, myself, am good luck! [Uncle Billy pushes wheelbarrow offstage, singing, "Oh, for a Life THE DOCTORS Page 63 on the Ocean Wave,^' while Miss Little and Karl McCullough, each with a hoe in hand, start in the other direction for the field.] CURTAIN e^ ACT THREE ^ Time: One Week Later. Scene: Cottage of Uncle Billy Bushnell. The dining and sitting room. Table set, red table-cloth, blue dishes, pewter teapot, oil-lamp on table. Chintz curtains, what-not, " God Bless Our Home." Old- fashioned wallpaper. Present: Uncle Billy, Mrs. Bushnell, wife of Uncle Billy, Mrs. X, and her little boy. Baby X, four years old, also a little girl of five, Lucy Bushnell, grand- child of Uncle Billy and Mrs. Billy. All at table. Uncle Billy — ^Well, I '11 be gosh-damed, if this hain't the queerest mix-up! Mrs. Bushnell — [Fat, motherly — big check apron.] Well, we can't back out, now — I '11 never give her up ! [Pats the cheek of Mrs. X.] Uncle Billy — [To Mrs. X.] It's like this: There's Dr. Weir — just got back today, as innocent as a lamb — protectin' one of his own* lunatics wot has run ofif. We hide her close. Officially, Dr. Weir is lookin' for her, very anxious, but unofficially he will soon be here with us lawbreakers, quite admirin' of the loony one. Oho! [Looks at Mrs. X.] 64 THE DOCTORS Page 65 Mrs. X — So you sent for Dr. Weir? Uncle Billy — [Passes cup for more tea.] Surely so— we would not deceive him, would we? Mrs. X — Never! Uncle Billy — [Pours tea in saucer and blows it] We are goin' to run you away from here, and of course you must say good-by to the Doctor from the same which you are running away from. Mrs. X— [Absent-mindedly.] Good-by to the Doc- tor? Uncle Billy—Yes, to Dr. Weir! Mrs. X — [Still dreaming.] To Dr. Weir! Mrs. Bushnell — ^Here you, babies! You can string these buttons. [Children get down on floor, gives the children a basket of buttons and shows them how to string them.] Baby X — You will take me, too, Mamma, if you go? Mrs. X—[To Uncle Billy.] " Little pitchers"— Yes, darling, of course ; Mamma could not do without her little man ! Baby X — [Running to his Mamma, and putting his arms around her neck.] And. the little man can not do without his sweetheart Mamma ! Uncle Billy — Now you two women better clear this table and slick up the room a bit — a great man is coming. Another great man, I should say. I really never thought that the Superintendent of the State Hospital would come to see us ! Page 66 THE DOCTORS Mrs. Bushnell — Oh, don't you plume yourself; he ain't comin' to see you! Uncle Billy — Well, p'raps he 's comin' to see you! [Women clear off table and start to wash dishes. Boy and girl quit playing on floor and. go to Uncle Billy.] Mrs. Bushnell — Just see them two little dears! Mrs. X — They are just like brother and sister. Mrs. Bushnell — You know Little Lucy has never been so happy as since you brought your boy here ! Mrs. X — Children do like their own. Mrs. Bushnell— The poor little thing never remem- bers her mother. She was less than two when her mother died. I am the only mother she has ever known, and really I believe I love her more than I ever did one of my own, and as for Uncle Billy, he is a regular fool with them children — always lets 'em have their own way, and they drives him around by his suspenders, and climbs on his back and rides him for a horse. He '11 spoil 'em for sure. [Children climb up on Uncle Billy's lap.] Baby X — ^Now tell us a story, Uncle Billy ! Uncle Billy — Once upon a time— Children — [Together.] Oh, we have heard that one before ! [Rapping hard at door. All startled.] Uncle Billy — It is Dr. Weir! But I '11 make sure first! [Opens window and looks out. Then to women.] Say, it 's that underdone play-actor chap. Shall I let him in? THE DOCTORS Page 67 Mrs. X — Oh, you mean Karl McCuIlough? [More knocking.] Uncle Billy — Yes — he 's harmless. Mrs. X — Certainly, let him in. He may be queer, but he is not crazy. [Uncle Billy goes to door, unbolts it. Enter Karl McCuIlough with a flourish. Children see him and run and hide.] Uncle Billy — Oh, he won't hurt you — ^Karl loves babies! [Children come out of hiding, while Karl is greeting the two women.] Children — Oh, tell us a story. Uncle Billy. Uncle Billy — Yes, dearies, yes, a little story tomor- row — but now it is you two for bed. I have ve-ree important business to transact with the grown-ups. Now a kiss and good-night. [Kisses the children and Mrs. Bushnell leads them away.] Mrs. X — [To Karl McCulbugh.] Well, what news? Karl McCuIlough — I think we are safe for a short time — but only a short time. The report is out that Mrs. X eluded her nurse and got to the station and took the train. The station loafers corroborated the report, and there you are. Mrs. X a thousand miles away on the rolling deep — and all the time there she sits, divinely fair and no more non compos men- tis than I am! Uncle Billy — ^But you used to be a trifle touched, and she never was. Karl McCuIlough — ^Temporarily, I was once a vie- Page 68 THE DOCTORS tim of a slight psychosis. It all came from my excess baggage in way of education. Mrs. X — ^Were you so highly educated as that? Karl McCullough — I should say so! Too much education is as bad as too much body. Suppose you are fifty pounds over weight, you can not check the surplus; you have to carry it with you wherever you go. Too much religion is bad, too. The Bible says, " Be not righteous overmuch." If you have too much religion you will become a prig. Mrs. X — God will forgive the sinner, but what he will do with the prig is still a problem. Karl McCulbugh — ^The over-learned man becomes a pedant, and a slave to his learning, just as many a woman is a slave to her housekeeping. If you have too much money, the money owns you, in- stead of your owning the money. Mrs. X- — How true! I thought this a few weeks ago, in going to the Post-Ofifice. I 'm a trusty, you know — Uncle Billy — ^You are a trusty wot has run away. Mrs. X — You mean I am a transient trusty ! Uncle Billy — Egzacly so — ^go on! Karl McCullough — Weir sent you on errands, but pretty women should be suspicious of doctors ! Uncle Billy — ^And preachers — ^go on, Mrs. X, with your story. Mrs. X — ^Well, as I was walking along the dusty Qn6 of 4tie Lear|f0ct Professions !^ v * \, ' -'%■ i'- A \\ n .f \ ■ .-::/.■ - ^ i t . ■' Breathe'^ore Eat Less. and Think ■ ■ ■ i . •of Everybo i^y- r .•*^i ^Doctors 'Is, . *'"■■■' ^:\ H- ■*' \ n^mm 'I- * v 1.' M J «/ THE DOCTORS Page 69 road I saw a horseshoe right in the middle of the road! Uncle Billy — ^That means good luck! Mrs. X — Certainly — I always knew that. Karl McCullough — [Still solemn.] That is a mere hallucination. I 've seen folks detained in asylums on less proof. Forget it! Mrs. X — ^Well, I stooped down and picked up the horseshoe, and was just thinking how I would place it over the door of our greenhouse — Karl McCullough — ^This is most distressing! Mrs. X — ^When I saw another horseshoe in the road! Uncle Billy — [Clapping his hands.] Good! Every- thing is comin' our way. Mrs. X — I picked that one up, too, and then I had a horseshoe in each hand-=— and — Karl McCullough — ^Terrible ! Mrs. X — ^AU at once I saw two horseshoes right together in the road. I looked around, and thought Uncle Billy or somebody was playing a trick on me. But there they were — two horseshoes. I picked them up, and would you believe it, I saw, just ahead, a pile of horseshoes in the road ! Karl MdCulbugh — And she is so young and won- drous fair — seeing things — I understand it per- fectly — I, too, have seen them. [Walks the floor excitedly.] Go on, go on — do not keep us in suspense! Page 70 THg: DOCTORS Mrs. X — Well, I walked right up to that pile of horseshoes and kicked into them! Karl McCullough — ^And there was nothing there! Mrs. X — You are wrong. They were horseshoes all right. And just then I saw a man coming down the road picking up horseshoes in a bag. Karl McCullough — Worse — ^she thinks they were horseshoes. She had horseshoe belief. The doctors have obsessed her. They bring about the ills they would cure. Damn all doctors! Mrs. X — Listen, Karl ! The man picking up horse- shoes was a junk-gentleman, and he had lost the tail-board out of his wagon, and was strewing horseshoes all along the way ! Uncle Billy — It is a good story all right, all right! [All laugh.] Mrs. X — Yes, and it has the peculiar quality of being true. But the moral is this, that while one horseshoe brings you good luck, a load is junk! Uncle Billy — It is a great story, but here 's one wot has it skun — Dr. Weir — [Pushing window open. Smiling.] Well, how are the escaped ones! [Enter Dr. Weir.] Mrs. X — Oh, Dr. Weir, I was trying to be patient. Karl McCullough — You are one. Mrs. X — But tell us now, what is the news? Dr. Weir — [Shaking hands all round.] Karl, Karl McCullough, are you here! THE DOCTORS Page 7/ Uncle Billy—Karl is all right, Doctor. He has worked with me for two months. He is all right — I see him much oftener than you and know him better. The only medicine he wanted was good- fellowship and sympathy. Mrs. X and me gave him both. He 's cured — ^you can discharge him now. Karl McCulhugh — I '11 never leave you good folks — I '11 stay and help others get well. Dr. Weir — Good ! I am glad you are here — I need you. Karl McCulhugh — [Solemnly.] I am here to protect the lady. This is a serious matter, Doctor ! Dr. Weir — Yes, Karl; your hand! [Shakes hands.] Yes, it is serious, and you are an honest man. Now, let us all sit down quietly together, and view this situation in its true light. Please remember I am not a doctor now — just a man, a layman, and we are here as friends. [All are seated.] Mrs. X — [Trying to smile.] This seems very serious. Karl McCullough — Since your happiness — ^your very life — is at stake, it certainly is. Mrs. X — I am sorry to be so much trouble to you all. Karl McCullough — Oh, we do not care for ourselves. But those doctors up on the hill have determined to give you the Rest-Cure — just why, nobody seems to know. But once they put you to bed, they take Page 72 THE DOCTORS away your food and begin to drug you, and then often they decide to operate on the patient — in the interests of science. A hospital is a slaughter-house — is n't that so, Dr. Weir? Dr. Weir — Do you want a professional or a non- professional answer? Karl McCulbugh — ^We want the truth ! Dr. Weir — ^Well, you are right — a doctor is respon- sible to nobody. Karl McCulbugh — ^He experiments on a human being in the name of science, and the patient dies and the crowner's quest shows that we and the rest are patients dead! Dr. Weir — Yes, and inquest reveals only that to which the doctors testify. Karl McCulbugh — Then you surely do not intend to allow this woman — this lady — to be maltreated and mistreated by those vivisectionists up on the hill? Dr. Weir — I certainly do not. Karl McCulbugh — So much, so good; now she is to escape. I can disguise myself and go with her as her protector. Once outside of the State, no law can touch a hair of her beautiful head. [Arises excitedly.] I will devote myself to her, I — Mrs. Bushnell — What is the need of her running away? Is n't Dr. Weir the boss of the whole shoot- ing-match ? THE DOCTORS Page 73 Uncle Billy — Oh, Mother, you mean chloroformin', carvin' and cuttin' match! Mrs. Bushnell — ^Billy Bushnell, you keep still ! Why all this foolishness about runnjng away, that 's what I want to know! What Dr. Weir has said has always went — just let him tell them Doctors to hands off and leave the beautiful lady here with me. I '11 be a mother to her and her baby boy — you sha 'n't turn her off. I don't care where she came from or what she has done, or what her right name is. She is a good woman and this is her home, and I am her friend. Dr. Weir — ^Splendid, Aunt Jemirnah, splendid! But you do not quite understand it all. Shall I tell them, Mrs. X? Well, the fact is, Mrs. X is sane and always has been. Mrs. Bushnell — Of course. [Petting her.] Dr. Weir-^She was received into the hospital under irregular procedure. Strangers brought her there and left her at night. They also left money to pay for her care. The commitment-papers were to be brought the next day by the family physician. Three months have passed and I have never seen this family physician yet. Mrs. X is not insane — she 's married ! Karl McCullough — ^Worse! Dr. Weir — ^You can take almost any sensitive, highly organized person and cross her, and mis- Page 74 THE DOCTORS treat her, and land her in an Insane Asylum on a doctor's certificate, duly indorsed by the court. The court, I need not state, is a man. He accepts the word of physicians — ^usually two. But these doctors work together, and act under direction of an attor- ney. I do not say that asylums fpr the insane — or, as we call them, hospitals for nervous disorders — are full of sane people, but I do say that there is nothing to prevent sane people being occasionally sent to hospitals, and dying there, too. Association with the insane tends, certainly, to depress. Mel- ancholia is only around the comer from any of us, and it is love that keeps mutual disease at bay. Treat the man as if he is insane and he soon will be. Mrs. Bushnell — ^Then why not let this woman go? Karl McCullough — Back to those next of kin who sent her here? Never! Uncle Billy — ^Next friends are folks who want something you 've got! Dr. Weir — Should I now discharge her as cured, I might be true to my profession, but false to her as a friend ! Mrs. Bushnell — I don't understand! Uncle Billy — [Smiling.]You are a woman! Mrs. Bushnell — Billy Bushnell, I suppose you would joke if the house was afire, and it was Judgment-day ! Uncle Billy — ^The house will be afire on Judgment- THE DOCTORS Page 75 day, all right, all right, if the preachers are kee- rect. Dr. Weir — Well, Mrs. X's husband-so-called is a preacher ! Mrs. Bushnell — They are as bad as doctors! Karl McCulhugh — ^They button their collars be- hind. Uncle Billy — That is, because they be lookin' back- ward. In Adam's fall we sinned all. Karl McCulhugh — ^These preachers ride on rail- road-trains on a child's ticket. Uncle Billy — 'Cause they have a child's mind. Karl McCulhugh — ^They deal in canned theology. Uncle Billy — That is why it is so full of microbes. Mrs. Bushnell — ^Why did that preacher send her here? Uncle Billy — To get rid of her! What do you sup- pose — so she would enjoy herself? Karl McCulhugh — ^The plot unfolds. Dr. Weir — ^They sent her here because she was an intelligent, earnest woman with ideas and ideals, and as such she came in contact with the conven- tional theology of her husband, and her husband — her husband — was in love with a rich widow — Karl McCulhugh— Oho\ The plot unfolds! Dr. Weir — If she dies here, her husband is free; or if he can prove her hopelessly insane, the marriage is annulled! Page 76 THE DOCTORS Uncle Billy — ^And the rich widdy puts up the money? Dr. Weir — I suppose so. Karl McCullough — ^And to prove her hopelessly insane they would put her in a strait-jacket, and reduce her to a point where she would be actually insane ! Dr. Weir — I make no charges against Dr. Charlcot ■ — I am only stating just a little about how things come about. There are three courses open to us now. One is for me to protect her and declare her sane, in which case she goes free, so far as this hospital is concerned, but not sp far, however, as her husband is concerned — Karl McCullough — ^The second plan is to allow her to escape. Uncle Billy— In the which case she may be ketched and sent somewhere else just as good. Dr. Weir — ^The third way [Looks steadily at Mrs. X and she looks at him.] is to let them prove her insane — and — and have their — their so-called marriage annulled, and then she is free from the man, but not from us. Mrs. Bushnell — ^Does one mind being in bondage to me? Mrs. X — [Solemnly. ]I like being in bondage to you. Karl McCullough — I '11 fight for her — I 'II die for her, before I '11 let them prove' her a maniac! , / :.. \ ■" % The Dead o^nly* know his Secrets, >" smd they Won^t Tell ; "> / ^ \ -■ ^ >■ j #1. ; . >r ,^/' '* '% in* *■. ♦ . ■\, --.. -'V -1/.1- *rf'- 9,- ' 'd * , V- A y. require a f I * ictaii •«• 7 *. » I ' ,5- ■^, ^ 1 -IV •■ - - ^ ^;'; 1 & ^^ ^^^^ ^^ . |,<» . ^^^J f ^^^ff •-■ ■ ^^^ ^^^^■ff^ *!, ■, ^■,%:*- THE DOCTORS Page 77 [T/ie children, Lucy and Baby X, come down-stairs and push in the door of the sitting-room in their night-clothes.] Lucy — [To Uncle Billy.] Oh, Grandpa, we see two big lights, like eyes a-coming — Mrs. Bushnell — ^An automobile! Dr. Weir — [Calmly.] It is the Commission, prob- ably. Uncle Billy — ^But how do they know she is here? Dr. Weir — Well, they know her little boy is here! Mrs. Bushnell — See here, you babies — [Grabs one under each arm, and starts hurriedly upstairs with them. Uncle Billy slams door of stairway shut, and then takes down double-barreled shotgun and places it in the corner. Knocking is heard at door.] Uncle Billy — All right, just a minute — ^keep your shirts on — Mrs. X— What shall I do? [Karl McCullough pushes Mrs. X into the pantry and slides a big chest against the pantry-door. Knocking heard again at door.] Karl McCullough — [Mounting chest.] Let 'em enter. Uncle Billy ! Uncle Billy — ^Ahaw, gents, walk in, walk in, every- body! Karl McCullough — ^Ladies and gentlemen, I call to your attention a matter — [Enter Dr. Charlcot, Mr. Woodcuff, an attorney, Dr. Dawson, the Rev. Cecil Kelrusey, Bill, the keeper, and an Interne.] Page 78 THE DOCTORS Interne — ^Well, I '11 be blamed, he is n't through that speech yet ! Karl McCulbugh — It is a theme long neglected, but of vast importance — Dr. Charlcot— [Embarrassed, seeing Dr. Weir.] Oh, Dr. Weir, I beg pardon; I did n't expect to see you here! Dr. Weir — Sit down, gentlemen. Karl is enlighten- ing us on a great theme — listen to him. Karl McCulbugh — ^Yes, gentlemen, a great theme — it is the subject of being true to yourself by being true to your work — Dr. Charlcot — Dr. Weir, this is Dr. Dawson, and this is Mr. Woodcuff. We three have been appointd a commission to ascertain the mental condition of Mrs. X. We must find her. Dr. Weir — Do you think she is here? Dr. Charlcot — Well, her child is here, and this child belongs to the Rev. Cecil Kelrusey. Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — ^And 1 now demand my child. Uncle Billy — His chee-ild ! I did n't know he had one. Mr. Woodcuff — Quite right — ^he demands his child ! Karl McCulbugh — [Continuing his speech.] Loyalty is that quality which prompts a person to be true to the thing he undertakes. It means definite direction, fixity of purpose. Loyalty supplies power, poise, purpose, ballast, and works for health and success. THE DOCTORS Page zg Nature helps the loyal man. If you are careless, slipshod, indififerent, Nature assumes that you wish to be a nobody and grants your prayer. Loyalty in one sense is love, for it is a form of at- traction. A vacillating mind is a sick miiid in a sick body. Vacillation is lack of loyalty — and it is a disease. Loyalty is not a mere matter of brain capacity: Success does not go to those who know the most — it gravitates to those who are true to the cause which they undertake. " This one thing I do." The human mind can be likened to a tract of land divided up into lots. These mental lots are made up of say, business, religion, education, love, art, music, work, play, a single lot being given to each subject — then each of these is subdivided. In some of these subjects the man has a devout, loyal interest ; for others he is neutral ; and toward others he may have an indifference bordering on repulsion. No man has ever lived who had an equal loyalty toward every department of life, and if a person is absolutely loyal to one he does well. If he can show himself equal to being true to several, he is a genius. The more worthy the things to which you are loyal, the greater are you. Unloyalty is very much more cbmmon than dis- loyalty. Page 80 THE DOCTORS Unloyalty simply means indifference. For instance, most church members are quite indifferent to truth. Their belief is supplied hand-me-down. They join the church for social reasons — in response to friendly coercion or family pressure, and so are moving in the line of least resistance. The person of intelligence who does not join a church is usually one who resists this polite social blackmail because his religious conscience forbids his being disloyal to truth. Such were the martyrs — ^Tyndale, Wy- clif, Ridley, Latimer, Savonarola, Bruno. These men all preferred the fagots to social favor and intellectual slavery, just as there are women who prefer death to ease, gauds and baubles and dis- loyalty to their ideal of love. Mr. Woodcuff — I think we have heard enough of speechmaking — Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — Quite sufficient. If my wife is on the premises I demand that she be produced ! I demand — [Door behind Karl McCullough is pushed violently open, the chest is upset and Karl tumbles to the floor. Mrs. X springs out of pantry, her hair flying, dress open at neck — her apron full of teg,cups, saucers and plates. She jumps on the overturned chest.] Mrs. X — ^Ladies and gentlemen, I appear before you tonight to present to you a great theme. The first point I would make is this. {Hurls a teacup at THE DOCTORS Page 81 head of the Rev. Cecil Kelrusey-^he ducks and the cup crashes against the wall. Continuing her speech and flinging crockery at the visitors.] Now, here is the meat of this matter; an English sparrow told it to me. Keeper Bill — [To Dr. Charlcot.] Shall we overpower her? Dr. Charlcot — ^Ask Weir — ^she is his patient, not mine! Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — She is my wife — ^poor thing, poor thing! Mr. Woodcuff — ^That 's so, she is his wife. Keepers, do your duty! [Keepers start forward to seize her. Mr. Woodcuff dodges a saucer.] Dr. Weir — [Stepping forward.] Keep back, boys. You are in my employ, and this patient is in my charge. Bear in mind, we must never meet violence with violence. Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — But she is my wife! Dr. Weir — ^Not exactly, at present! Mr. Woodcuff — I am attorney for the parties — she is his wife ! Dr. Weir — ^What do you gentlemen wish? Mrs. X — [6'ing5 or recites.] If Adam set up a job for me. Six thousand years before I was born. The sensible course, it seems to me, (When Gabriel plays his E flat horn) Page 82 THE DOCTORS Is to let old Adam stand up and take Whatever judgment his deeds require, And if either 's to fry in a burning lake, The boss of the job should stand the fire. Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — ^This is terrible, terrible! Mr. Woodcuff — [In great pain, seemingly.] What to do — what to do! Mrs. X — Instances are too common to relate of men who were absolutely loyal to their families, yet who have plundered society in a financial way. There are gamblers who are the soul of honor when it comes to keeping a promise, and there are women of the town who faithfully pay their baker, butcher and grocer, and would be ashamed and disgraced if they were not able to do so. On the other hand, we all know faithful wives who practise mild prevari- cation with their lesser half and children, and whose word is not worth a Digger Indian's bond. There are plenty of preachers who do not pay their debts and have no desire to. Preachers who are false to their wives and true to their churches are numerous — Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — ^Her mind is absolutely gone! Mrs. X — ^Lawyers are men who get bad people out of trouble and good ones in. They are the sharks of the commercial sea— wolves of society —the hyenas— Mr. Woodcuff — She is totally deranged! How sad, how sad ! THE DOCTORS Page 83 Mrs. X — ^There are lawyers who deceive clients-, public and court when opportunity offers, yet who are loyal to the interests of their families. Yet a lawyer may be true to his rogue client and false to his wife. Mr. Woodcuff — Her mind is an absolute blank! Dr. Dawson — ^And yet at times there is seemingly sense in what she says! Mrs. X — ^The doctor is a bloody man, His looks give us a fright ; And with a pencil blue he kills The choicest things we write. Dr. Dawson — It is acute dementia — the case is hopeless ! Mrs. X — ^There is no prophylactic so powerful as the happy, healthy resiliency of Nature. Life is a fight against disease, and Nature has provided that Life shall win if given but half a chance. Health is natural; disease is abnormal. To introduce dis- ease into a healthy body under the plea that you are fortifying the individual against disease, is the very acme of scientific stupidity. There is nothing resists disease equal to health — keep it, prize it, work for it, pray for it! And when a doctor or anybody else talks to you about inocu- lating the beautiful body of your child with dead matter from a diseased cow, in the interest of Page 84 THE. DOCTORS health, tell him to go to — India, where dried grass- hoppers and snake-tongues are considered a cure for cholera. The cure for consumption — and there is only one cure for consumption — is living out-of-doors. Mr. Woodcuff — Even in her madness she states a little truth. Mrs. X — I think it ill becomes a man, Though he be sorely swat. Because his house has blown away, To grumble at his lot. Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — Oh, my poor sick wife, my poor sick wife ! Mr. Woodcuff— What to do — what to do! [Dodges cup thrown by Mrs. X.] Mrs. X — Babies are the dice of destiny ! Dr. Charlcot — I do not see that you gentlemen have anything to grieve over. The whole thing is easy, now; you see it is hopeless dementia! Mrs. X — ^The boy stood on the burning deck, But he did not feel it burn, For he had spent ' 'ThreeWeeks' ' with Glyn On the banks of Lake Lucerne. Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — Yes, her rnind is absolutely gone. Mrs. X — [Dances.] Oh, I know you — [To Mr. Kelrusey.] You are an English Sparrow. [Flings a *■•*,./'*' He ^ 6n io |li| Job 4 n ..» >/ , F w^' jw - * ~ "^IB ^ f - .^ • ' '• . " ' ^? 1 '- * r ' ■ -.*»£ i/% . b'cloekinlhei^ THE DOCTORS Page 8^ ■ — — ' 1 cup at Mr. Woodcuff, who dodgef.] And you are a brass-mounted monkey! Mr. Woodcuff— What to do— what to do! Dr. Dawson — Sign the report that she is hopelessly insane. Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — ^Terrible, terrible ! Mrs. X — The great man is the one who marches in Life's procession, and yet sits high in the grand- stand, and sees himself go by. Dr. Dawson — [To the Rev. Cecil Kelrusey.] Well, it 's what you wanted, is n't it? A clean report, acute dementia of a chronic nature — that annuls your marriage. We can go back and make out the papers tonight. Mrs. X — ^The more we understand life, the less use we have for preachers ! Mr. Woodcuff — ^Now to get the child, and our er- rand is over ! Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — ^Yes; get my dear child! Dr. Dawson — It is absolutely plain to us all that she is incapable of caring for the dear little thing ! Mrs. X — It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you can't get! Mr. Woodcuff — ^Perfectly plain! Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — Yes; we better take the baby right along now. Mrs. X — Where there is a man and a woman there Page 86 THE DOCTORS is a drama — provided they are not too old — Mr. Woodcuff — [In a loud, official voice.] I wish to speak to Mr. William Bushnell, if he is present. Uncle Billy — [Stepping forward.] I am the same! Mrs. X — ^Those who are satisfied are either very wise or very stupid — one has lived, the other hasn't! Mr. Woodcuff — ^Mr, Bushnell, you have secreted here on these premises, a certain male child, to wit — Uncle Billy — [Backing towards the double-barreled shotgun in corner.] Yezzer — ^go ort! Mrs. X — ^The finger of time needs the services of a manicure — Mr. Woodcuff — ^As attorney for the only competent parent, I demand the child! Uncle Billy — [With shot gun on his arm.] And as owner of this yere shebang, I demand that you shall vamoose! Mrs. X — ^Piety is the tinfoil of pretense — Mr. Woodcuff— What! Mrs. X — ^The lawyer is a privateer; the thief is a pirate. One gets honors — the other a rope — Uncle Billy—Hike ! Mrs. X — I can steer clear of the Rocks of Destruc- tion — ^but the undertow and shallows of pettiness nearly drown me! Rev. Cecil Kelrusey — ^We do not understand! THE DOCTORS Page 87 Uncle Billy — ^You-all gospel-sharks, and law-wolves, and sawbones — all for the Twenty-Three ! Dr. Weir — [Stepping between Uncle Billy and the rest.] Now, gentlemen, you have your proof as to the sanity of this patient; perhaps you had better let this matter rest. Come to my office tomorrow! Mr. Woodcuff — [Backing toward door.] Mr. Bushnell you will hear from me tomorrow! [Mr. Wood- cuff, Mr. Kelrusey and Dr. Dawson back out of door, bumping together as they go.] Mrs. X — [Singing and dancing on chest.] Life is simply a love-scrape. Uncle Billy — It 's lucky for 'em that they did n't stay ! Dr. Weir — Is your gun loaded? Uncle Billy — ^No, t ain't loaded, but I could club with it, all right, all right. Dr. Charlcot — [To keepers.] Hold on, boys. [To Dr. Weir.] Do you think you can manage her alone? Dr. Weir — Oh, yes — I '11 try it — ^you may go. Dr. Charlcot — ^Well, good night — and good luck. You are the nerviest man I ever saw! Dr. Weir — ^Thanks, and good-night! [Exit Dr. Charl- cot and keepers. Sound of automobile starting away.] Mrs. Bushnell — [Pushing open door that leads from stairway.] Have they went? Karl McCullough — ^The coast is clear! [Enter Mrs. Bushnell, cautiously leading the two children.] Page 88 THE DOCTORS Mrs. X — [Stepping down from chest and reeling with fatigue. Dr. Weir catches her in his arms.] Thank God, that much is over! [The little boy holds her hands.] Baby X — ^Don't mind, Mamma;. Dr. Weir and me will protect you. Mrs. X — Bless his dear heart ! Dr. Weir — This means the divorce — and then you are free! Mrs. X — [Half-smiling.] Yes; but we are not out of our troubles yet! Karl McCullough — It was a wonderful stunt — I could n't have done better myself. [All gather close together, smile and talk, reviewing the stormy scene through which they have just passed.] Uncle Billy — [With a baby in each arm.] A good evenin's work, says I — ^good work! CURTAIN ^ ACT FOUR ^ Time: Two Months Later Than Act III Scene :The same as Act. II. Interior of Greenhouse. Patients at work potting plants, picking off dead leaves; some weaving baskets, arranging flowers. Karl McCuUough standing on a step-ladder, smok- ing and blowing smoke on plants. In foreground, Mrs. X and Dr. Charlcot in earnest conversation. Mrs. X dressed very neatly, wears nurse's uniform, with Red Cross cap. Dr. Charlcot — [Excitedly.] Well, in some ways you have done good work, but you know I am in charge of the place! Mrs. X — Certainly, when Dr. Weir is away. Dr. Charlcot — ^Dr. Weir is the nominal head of the institution, but I am the working manager. I am a scientific surgeon — I am an alienist, with degrees from Harvard, Bellevue and Heidelberg. I am absolutely abreast with the times in therapeutics, and yet, I find myself thwarted and reduced to a secondary position by you — ^by you, patient, in the asylum! Mrs. X — ^That is so; I am a patient. Dr. Charlcot. 89 Page go THE DOCTORS Dr. Charlcot — ^A commission sat on you only two months ago, and declared that you were incurably demented. Mrs. X — I believe— I believe you were one of the commission. Dr. Charlcot — I had that honor. Mrs. X — ^And now you say you are dominated over and dictated to by one whom you declared insane? Dr. Charlcot — ^Exactly so. One of us must go! Mrs.X — ^And you have degrees from Harvard, Bellevue and Heidelberg ! [Enter Dr. Dibble, Dr. Doosey and Dr. Abergrab.] Dr. Dibble — [Interrupting.] He certainly has. Dr. Doosey — ^As I know — ^we belong to the same frat. Dr. Abergrab — ^His methods are scientific and we uphold him! Dr. Charlcot — You see that the physicians of the institution are with me. Mrs. X — [Musingly.] I see! Dr. Charlcot — ^And Dr. Weir would be too, if he knew the true conditions of affairs ! Mrs. X — ^Does n't he know? Dr. Charlcot — He certainly does not — but I am going to lay the whole case before him when he comes home today. Dr. Dibble — ^We will explain exactly what you have done! THE DOCTORS Page 91 Dr. Abergrab — ^How you have usurped power — Dr. Doosey — ^And, of course, filled the patients with prejudice — Dr. Abergrab — ^By saying there is no vitality in drugs. Dr. Dibble — ^And telling them they can all get well and keep well without the aid of doctors, if they will only think rightly. Dr. Doosey — ^You have, too, repeatedly warned them against what you call the Doctor Habit! Karl Md2ullough — [From his position on the step- ladder.] In this she did well! Dr. Charlcot— What's that! Karl McCullough — She has told patients and nurses that running to a doctor for relief if one feels badly is proof of bughouse! Dr. Abergrab — I would like to know why ! Karl McCullough — If we knew how to live rightly and think rightly, we would never feel badly ! Dr. Charlcot — ^There, now, is some more of your silliness! Karl McCullough — ^The degree of M. D. is given on your proficiency in memorizing things told you by lecturers and printed books. These lecturers get their knowledge from books, and the men who wrote the books got their information from lectures and books. It is very rarely that any new or com- mon sense idea is advocated in colleges, because Pagegx THE DOCTORS to do so is to lose caste. New ideas are forced in by barbarians, who have no reputation to lose, and then are adopted by the schoolmen when they have to. Any pupil who introduces his own ideas in op- position to the textbooks is refused his diploma. And any man who does not have his diploma is not allowed by the State to practise medicine. So you see how the tendency is to make ignorance and superstition perpetual in medicine, exactly the same as in theology. To the average mind sequence is proof. For in- stance : Plug hats are worn in all civilized countries. In barbaric countries there are no plug hats. There- fore, it is impossible to have civilization without plug hats. Dr. Charlcot — ^You are crazy ! Karl M(Cullough — ^But I 'm not so dangerous as you! Dr. Dibble — It is this woman who has taught him all this foolishness! Dr. Doosey — She has had the big gate at the en- trance to the grounds taken off its hinges ! Dr. Abergrab— And sold it for junk to buy glass beads for the patients ! First Patient — Quite right, and she kiboshed the bars from the windows ! Fourth Patient — And abolished the Rest-Cure! Karl McCulbugh — ^And set the patients to work! >•-(*!', (Il •^' ., ■ C*gr V 1 'Ic^'M / 4 : i -= :*i ...I* ••■.r *.-' ;,V: ii- ',, }^':'■( »' V 4 ; *' "*^ i f Jr. v\ ^' I /, ■/■ 1 ( ^'. "-;■ W-'iT-W'^^j-T- ■4'- THE DOCTORS Page 93 Second Patient — ^And done away with the strait- jacket and the handcuffs! Third Patient — ^And the paddle! Dr. Dibble — ^And ruined our discipline! Karl McCullough — ^And also reduced the number of attendants by letting patients take care of their own rooms and of each other. Dr. Charlcot—Now, Mrs. X, we did n't come here to take part in a lunatics' debate — Karl McCulbugh — You might do worse! There is no debasing practice, nor loathsome, putrid thing that has not been used and recommended by doc- tors as a cure for disease. So anxious have you been that you could not wait for people to get sick, but like Dr. Jenner have operated on the well. Dr. Charlcot — Is n't there anybody that can stop that fool's mouth? Mrs. X — ^Tell me, Dr. Charlcot, why did you come to me ? \Smiling\ Do you want me to set you to work ? First Patient — ^Doctors can't work! Second Patient — ^They would pot the plants leaves down and roots in the air! Prof. Bumball — ^Wait a minute and let me get that down. [Writes rapidly.] Third Patient — ^Doctors are as needless as lunatics! Fourth Patient— And quite as incompetent! Karl McCullough — ^And they are on the bink from imbibing bad ideas! Page 94 THE DOCTORS Dr. Charlcot — I know what I am talking about. I am the author of — Karl McCullough — The author is a man Whose pen runs on and on all day ; And I am told that he writes best When he has the least to say. First Patient — Let me try that: You should not lie awake all night And get truth all awry ; Had Adam a dislike for fruit There 'd be no you or I. Fourth Patient — Oh, that is nothing : I often lie awake at night And wonder how 't would be Had Adam not cared more for fruit Than for celibacy. Second Patient — Just give me a chance : I wish the bottom of the hills Were moved up to the top, Then, when I wanted to go up, I 'd simply have to drop. Third Patient — It 's my turn: The doctors they are eagle-eyed, They watch what you 're about, And if they like it not they chew You up and spit you out. THE DOCTORS Page 95 Prof. Bumball — [Writing.] Go slow, now — they are coming too fast for me. Dr. Abergrab — ^What are you trying to do? Prof. Bumball — I am Boswellizing the bunch! Dr. Charlcot — [To Mrs. X.] You have made the place a regular bedlam! Karl MdCullough — ^Which is better than putting us to bed. First Patient — ^We work, don't we? Second Patient — Don't we earn our living? Third Patient — ^And since Mrs. X set us to work, are n't we all in better health? Fourth Patient — If she has shown us how to work and laugh and help others, she can't be so awful bad! Dr. Charlcot — Send these people away — I demand it! I can't listen longer to their chatter — Mrs. X — Oho, all of you, children! Now for the hoe-class — out in the sunshine, across the meadow, get a drink at the big pump as you go. Uncle Billy will show you what to do. Karl, you lead the march please! [Suit/e — everybody gets a hoe and shoulders it.] Karl MdCullough — ^Heads up, crown high, chin in — mark time, here we go — At breakfast I am always late, For, as my clothes I dojn, I can not think which of my socks Upon which foot goes on! Pageg6 THE DOCTORS All ready? One, two, three — march! [Exeunt the patients, leaving the doctors and Mrs. X on stage.] Dr. Charlcot — Now, Mrs. X, that we have gotten rid of your zoological collection, we can talk sensibly. Mrs. X — But I am a lunatic! Dr. Charlcot — Officially, yes; but unofficially you are the smartest woman I ever saw ! Mrs. X — Oh, thank you ! Dr. Charlcot — Do not plume yourself too much. You simply have lucid intervals. When I testified to your derangement, you were actually demented, but at present I admit you are normal. Dr. Abergrab — Beyond the normal ! Dr. Dibble — She is a genius ! Dr. Doosey — You know what Lombroso says about the genius? Dr. Charlcot — I know — genius is degeneracy. But now, gentlemen, this woman is sane and we will treat her as such. ■ Dr. Abergrab — Certainly, certainly — ^hers is a most interesting case — Dr. Dibble — Weir seems to find it so! Mrs. X — [With force.] Gentlemen — ^gentlemen — you are reaching your limit ! Dr. Charlcot — Oh, he was only joking. What we want to say is this, that you are demoralizing the institution, and we demand — I should say, request that you leave the institution at once. THE DOCTORS Page g? Mrs. X — ^Leave the institution? Dr. Charlcot — Yes; for your own good and ours — will you go? Mrs. X — ^How can I go when I am a patient? Dr. Charlcot — ^Nominally you are a patient, but you can go — ^no one will detain you. The place is not big enough for both of us — and you are it ! Mrs. X — ^Do you discharge me as cured? Dr. Charlcot — ^Yes. Mrs. X — ^But I am a nurse ! Dr. Dibble — ^And head nurse at that — aha, ooho! Dr. Abergrab — She has never been appointed — she just drifted, gravitated into her present position. Mrs. X — Into this position as head nurse? Dr. Dibble — ^That is the size of it. Mrs. X — Can you discharge a nurse as cured and order her to run away? Would not that be a little — little irregular? Dr. Charlcot — ^Your whole presence here has been irregular from the first ! Mrs. X — ^Heaven knows I did not come of my own accord ! Dr. Charlcot — Then you can leave of your own accord ! Mrs. X — So I must go! Dr. Charlcot — ^Yes; you leave on the noon train! Mrs. X — ^Deported violently from an Insane Asy- lum! Page 98 THE DOCTORS Dr. Charlcot — [With determination.] We have no time to argue — ^go pack your scanty effects, and the carriage will be ready in an hour to take you to the station. Mrs. X — But why not wait until Dr. Weir returns — ^he '11 be back this afternoon! Dr. Charlcot — ^There is no need of waiting — ^Dr. Weir must not be troubled with details. All I want to report to him is that you have gone. Mrs. X — But suppose I refuse to go! Dr. Charlcot — ^A discharged patient can not refuse to go ! Mrs. X — But if I should refuse? Dr. Charlcot — ^Then, by God, I will send your baby back to that preacher, its father and your legal husband; and once he gets the child, all hell can't get the kid away from him! [Mrs. X turns deathly pale — reels, catches at a palm — pulls palm off with a crash — backs away from doctors. Dr. Dibble steps for- ward to support her — she shakes him off ferociously. They stare at her.] Dr. Charlcot — Just four minutes at the most, boys, and you get a psychosis. Dr. Dibble — She will be raving in a minute — Dr. Doosey — ^Then for the hypodermic needle! Dr.Abergrab — It's coming all right, all right! [Lights cigarette.] Mrs. X — [Seated — very calm.] So you will THE DOCTORS Page 99 send my — ^baby — back — to — my — late husband! Dr. Charlcot — [Filling his pipe and seating himself with back toward her.] We certainly will! Mrs. X — ^But he agreed to let me keep my child! Dr. Charlcot — I understand all that perfectly. He agreed simply because Dr. Weir up and told him to leave the baby with you, otherwise he — the great Dr. Weir — ^would go into court and declare that you were perfectly sane ! Mrs. X — ^And that would mean? Dr. Charlcot — ^No annulment of your marriage! Mrs. X — ^And if you now discharge me as cured, does that not place an estoppel on the legal pro- ceedings to annul the marriage? Dr. Charlcot — I do not know — and neither do I care a damn! Mrs. X — ^But they paid you a big sum to testify that I was incurably insane! Dr. Charlcot — You lie — they paid me nothing. Mrs. X — ^They paid you to testify. Dr. Charlcot — ^And what business is it of yours, if they did, anyway. Dr. Abergrab — ^You can't prove that they paid him a cent ! Dr. Dibble — She is a lunatic and could not testify, anyhow. Dr. Doosey — ^We are all ready to swear that you are insane ! Page loo THE DOCTORS Mrs. X — ^And your word will be accepted by the court? Dr. Doosey — Certainly — ^we are doctors — ^we are all members of one of the learned professions. Dr. Charlcot — ^Let us stop this eternal talk! Now, if ^you prefer not be cleared of the charge of insanity, then run away — and be blanked ! Otherwise, you go away discharged — ^now, which is it? Mrs. X — I '11 go — and see my baby — and talk with Mrs. Bushnell — Dr. Abergrab — She means Uncle Billy ! [Laughs.] Dr. Chxirlcot — ^You shall not leave this room — ^you decide now and here! [They circle round her and one picks up a shovel.] Dr. Dibble — ^You have libeled oUr profession! Dr. Charlcot — ^You have forced your fool ideas of work, deep breathing and love upon the institution, until even the nurses are batty ! Mrs. X — I have tried to tell them the truth! Dr. Charlcot — Well, the place is not big enough for you and me — you have even hypnotized Dr. Weir. Mrs. X — [Musingly.] Dr. Weir! Dr. Charlcot — ^You choose and choose now — shall I make out the discharge-papers or do you run away from this place? Mrs. X — Just give me a momQit to think — my head seems in a whirl! [Her head drops forward.] Dr. Abergrab — It 's coming! « i P4i ■ '. ' >;^ i^ V ■'■V'TH^ Hot-Air Treatment *."'■/, ^.f '^•- ^? "l ft* #f! ^' ,1' . , ■■ ■■ ■• ' • •> t * i . J^^^^^^V •P \' . • • i ■ - m m ; ' V \ . < :--\. /■«, THE DOCTORS Page loi Dr. Charlcot — Quick, Dibble, that morphine-needle ! Hurry! The cocaine will do — ^she will be scream- ing in a minute! [Enter Uncle Billy with three nurses, singing, "Oh, for a Life on the Ocean Wave."] Uncle Billy — In heaven's name! Are you sawbones chaps here yet? Well, I rather reckon you have no work to do! [Mrs. X starts to her feet and struggles toward Uncle Billy, who catches her.] Dr. Charlcot — She 's had a bad spell ! Uncle BiWy— What's that? Dr. Charlcot — Oh, nothing, just one of her queer spells — ^she is better now ! Uncle Billy — ^You have been pestering her! Dr. Dibble — ^We were advising with her. Dr. Doosey — ^About her new methods, you know. Dr. Abergrab — ^This thing of work, exercise, mak- ing things — keeping busy ! Uncle Billy — ^Well, gents, we'll talk of that later. Just now it's news — ^good news! That preacher chap has got his divorce all right, all right! Mrs. X — I don't understand! Uncle Billy — ^Neither do I. All I know is that Dr. Weir, he came rushing over to my house, askin', " Where is Mrs. X — I say — ^where is Mrs. X? " "Nothing wrong," says my old woman, just like that — " Nothing wrong, I hopes!" "Oh, no," says Dr. Weir, laughing like a lunatic — " She 's free — ^she 's free— I heard the news in New Page 1 02 THE DOCTORS York City and took the very first train for home — she 's free — ^where is she? " Then he kissed little Baby X, hugged Lucy, smack- ed the old woman and twisted my hand and started for the main ofifice to find her. He '11 be here in a minute ! Dr. Charlcot — I think we had better go! [Enter a troop of nurses.] Miss Little — Dr. Weir is back and Mrs. X is free — that preacher has no more claim on her ! [Enter Dr. Weir, Mrs. Bushnell, little Lucy on one side and Baby X on the other, all out of breath\ Mrs. Bushnell — She 's free, and that rogue with his collar buttoned behind has no claim on her ! [Enter Karl McCullough with a rush.] Karl McCullough — ^The theological wolf has got his wish — and she is free! [Enter troop of patients talk- ing to each other.] First Patient — ^This place stands for mutual service! Second Patient — ^For sunshine, fresh air, and work! Third Patient — For deep breathing and for forget- fulness of self! Fourth Patient — It wearies me to walk : For when I move around I always have to move my foot, And put it on the ground. Prof. Bumball — [Writing.] Not quite so fast, please. THE DOCTORS Page 103 First Patient — When I awaken in the morn, I 'm sad, I must confess. To think that ere I can get out I must get up and dress. Prof. Bumball — ^Take it easy, neighbors; take it easy! Second Patient — I hate to use a Folding-bed, Because I have been toid That many sleeping Lambkins have Been gathered in the fold. Dr. Charlcot — [Loudly.] Dr. Weir, as spokesman of the surgeons and physicians of this institution, I wish to inform you that we resign! [Dr. Weir is talking in animated way to Mrs. X and pays no at- tention to Charlcot.] Prof. Bumball — [Writing.] Please come again with that. Dr. Charlcot. Uncle Billy — Say it again, Charlcot, say it loud. [Dr. Weir kisses hands of Mrs. X.] Dr. Dibble — ^Microbes! Dr. Charlcot — I wish to say — we resign! Dr. Weir — Oh, Charlcot, why not reform? Dr. Charlcot — ^To abandon the learning of the past and take up fads and fancies is more than my con- science will allow! Page 104 THE DOCTORS Uncle Billy — His conscience! Dr. Weir — Let us understand each other. The science of medicine is an exploded science. It is founded on the idea that man's physical economy is not automatic; that it needs an engineer and also demands as much tinkering as a gasoline-engine. 1[ The doctors have called in the police to protect them in a monopoly under the pretense of protect- ing the people. That is, they have passed laws mak- ing it a misdemeanor for any one to practise medi- cine save as the individual practises as they did. Karl McCullough — ^You can not die legally without the aid of a doctor. First Patient — If you die without a doctor you are illegitimate! Dr. Weir — ^The irregulars have doubtless cured just as many patients as the orthodox doctors, and always you were safer in the hands of an ignoramus who knew that he did n't know, than in the hands of an allopath who was sure he did. In the good old days the patients who eluded the rjiurse and violated the doctor's orders were the ones A^ho got well. The others lived or died as the case may be. The giving of iron in every prescription, by the old-time doc- tor, in the firm belief that it would give the sick man strength, only mirrors the general superstition and ignorance of the craft. With a brand-new materia medica, and scores of THE DOCTORS Page io$ irregulars, *' healing " cases that regulars pro- nounced incurable, and large numbers of men and women tabuing medicine absolutely, and still not enjoying poor health, the best physicians are seeing the handwriting on the wall and pinning their faith to dietetics, fresh air, exercise and mental equanimity. It is love that cures, and love is founded on faith! Karl McCuUough — ^True, the medical books record nearly three hundred distinct diseases, with specific remedies for each. The medical fledglings, like the good old hard-shells of youth, diagnose the cases and straightway give the poor patient a repository, a suppository, a supposition, a sedition, a sedative, a stimulant, a pastelle, a capsule, a bolus or an early riser. They shove things down your throat, rub stuff on you, inject things into you and cut things out of you — all in the name of harmony and happiness. A man has a quarrel with his wife, or gets into a lawsuit, and he '11 probably have either a cold in his head, acute indigestion, sciatica, mastoditis, neuritis, rheumatism, inflamed eyes or something else just as bad. Keep it up and he '11 have Bright's disease, fatty degeneration of the cerebellum, "aphasia," locomotor ataxia or creeping paralysis. Dr. Weir — Quite right, Karl ! My heart goes out to the honest doctor who knows that what are called Page 1 06 THE DOCTORS diseases are merely symptoms of general conditions and no disease can be cured lintil the patient changes his mode of life, and gets a new method of thinking. The fallacy of specific drugs for specific ills lies in the fact that no two human bodies are alike, any more than two voices or two faces are alike. One man thrives on what is poison to another. I eat strawberries and like thern. But my neighbor would die inside of a week if he ate them. Drugs set up unknown fermentations, fomentations and chemical actions in the human system, and have after, or secondary, effects which no physician can foretell, for the simple reason that Nature never duplicates a physical body. An elaborate system of medicine, like an elaborate set of morals, ends in sciolism, pedantry and priggishness. In both cases a few plain rules suffice. In morals one man's liberty ends where another man's rights begin. The Golden Rule covers the question. As to health, it is simply a matter of moderate eating, regular sleep, systematic work and outdoor exercise; and above all things the preservation of the kindly attitude of mind as opposed to that of indifference, contempt or hate. Hate means a hotbox and sand in the bearings, while love lubricates all the affairs of life. Dr. Charlcot — Oh, it is plain where you got all this stuff! What chance do science and learning have THE DOCTORS Page 107 where the swish of a petticoat is heard! Karl McCulbugh — ^Blessed be the basque! Prof. Bumball — 'And the basquine ! First Patient — ^And the batiste! Second Patient — ^And the challis! Third Patient — ^And the pongee! Fourth Patient — Great is the guimpe! Karl McCulbugh— Also the kilt and the garibaldi and the spencer waist ! Dr. Weir — Yes, Dr. Charlcot; this woman taught me truth. And hereafter I will practise the science of health, not the science of disease. Nurses — Good! good! hear! hear!! Dr. Weir — ^No more violence— no more coercion — no more drugs. And to her I give all the credit. Hereafter, you will obey her suggestions, for her wish is mine. Dr. Charlcot — ^Then she is to supersede me! Dr. Weir— Yes. Dr. Charlcot — ^We resign! Dr. Weir — Your resignation is accepted. [Exeunt doctors.] Friends, to make it plain, this lady is to be my partner, my comrade, my counselor — and will soon be — my wife ! Uncle Billy — I am a Justice of the Peace! Nurses — ^He is a Justice of the Peace! [Dr. Weir and Mrs. X face Uncle Billy — hand in hand.] Uncle Billy — You now, Agnew Weir, do you take Page 1 08 THE DOCTORS this woman as your lawful, wedded wife? Dr. Weir—\ do. Uncle Billy — ^And you, Mrs. X — ^what 's your name? — do you accept this man as your husband? Mrs. X—\ do. Uncle Billy — ^Then, in truth, you are no longer Mrs. X, but are now Mrs. Weir — and may God have mercy on your souls ! Dr. Weir— God has surely been good to us thus far! Mrs. Weir — He has guided our feet through dark places. Dr. Weir — ^And brought us into the light. First Patient — ^Love is the great Welsbach! Prof. Bumball—[Writirig.] Oh, pretty fair! Karl McCullough — Each morn, if you would rightly live On this terrestrial ball. Name o'er your foes and then forgive, Else don't get up at all. CURTAIN ' V. Ma4atn» jrou Have Mn Incurable Disease .. Mi-v; \ ■, "• * 0'.=- '.■^■^^v'^"^ r^U S-, 'M -V •J':! h-7 ^c:^ ISk ^^n^" I, \ * ■■I ^ H' ♦■■» "" _v J- ^ref^. f eis^tjj^e >--. ^ ^, r ^. ■; ''''■"■^:^';*^ ■ \*> attqjpe&Bys^ fr / /.. I * ■.^4. I • >^ - \ -^#1,. f v^^ * ■ --. ' ^ ,, ■* . \ '^.,f. , ^ f '4. #