They had to fall back coarsely on the
terror of infection and death. They prescribed inoculations and
operations. Whatever part of a human being could be cut out
without necessarily killing him they cut out; and he often died
(unnecessarily of course) in consequence. From such trifles as
uvulas and tonsils they went on to ovaries and appendices until
at last no one's inside was safe. They explained that the human
intestine was too long, and that nothing could make a child of
Adam healthy except short circuiting the pylorus by cutting a
length out of the lower intestine and fastening it directly to
the stomach. As their mechanist theory taught them that medicine
was the business of the chemist's laboratory, and surgery of the
carpenter's shop, and also that Science (by which they meant
their practices) was so important that no consideration for the
interests of any individual creature, whether frog or
philosopher, much less the vulgar commonplaces of sentimental
ethics, could weigh for a moment against the remotest off-chance
of an addition to the body of scientific knowledge, they operated
and vivisected and inoculated and lied on a stupendous scale,
clamoring for and actually acquiring such legal powers over the
bodies of their fellow-citizens as neither king, pope, nor
parliament dare ever have claimed.
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