ABSTRACT
The critics of modern medicine complain that while the surgical treatment is often unduly violent, the medicine is usually ineffective except as a generator of faith. They also point out that in medical teaching enormously greater stress is laid on diagnosis than on treatment. Fortunately for the medical profession, its critics commonly support some therapeutic system such as faith-healing, osteopathy, or herbalism, which is quite demonstrably less efficient than that of ordinary medicine. The doctor is generally called in to cure a scar. Diphtheria and one of the types of pneumonia are both bacterial diseases which can be cured by injections of serum. Early diagnosis of disease is the business of the general public even more than of the medical profession. The study of medicine by laymen is said, probably with truth, to conduce to the spread of imaginary maladies.
