July 22, 1907.]
HOLLOW REFORMS.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
phrase in this empire. The sanctity of liberty and justice, worth far more than life—or rather, without which life is worth- less-has received a severe blow. The Edict against summary decapitation has been as coolly disregarded as the edicts against judicial torture. The assassin was promptly executed, without trial, and so savage was officialdom at the outrage, that we learn the company of soldiers who had been acting as guards was wiped out to a man. In addition, the beart of the assassin was cut out, and offered to the manes of his victim. Reports from the north are at present somewhat conflicting. Auking is said to have remained quiet, and again it is reported that there was rioting and a tight with revolutionary students. We quite expect to learn later of the usual barbarities.
DOCTORS DISAGREE.
(Daily Press, 16th July.) Those who are interested in maintaining optimism with regard to reforms and symptoms of reform in China are still busy. Most of us will rejoice when there are sufficient facts to warrant their purposeful statements, but in the meantime the interests of truth require that we should not permit them to mislead the outside world. The thin end of the wedge of education bas got in, but it is somewhat bent, and the correct liue of cleavage is not yet being followed. | Opium shops have been closed with some ostentation, but there is no Edict in opera. tion against the private consumption of the drug, and it is being everywhere sold for consumption "off the premises. ' Mr. LUPTON, M.P., has told Mr. MORLEY that the English agitators are prepared to pay for their righteousness, which evoked from the latter some quite excusable cynicism. Mr. LUPTON had in his mind's eye only compen- sation to India; he and others will find that
(Daily Press, July 17th.) Hongkong, Shanghai, and Singapore will We had expectation of a rather pretty have equally valid claims to compensation, falling out, when Truth some weeks ago if it ever comes to such an issue, which we ventilated the matters of contention between doubt. Juridical reforms we shall refer to the medical hierarchy and one Dr. SHAW. presently. The most curious addition to Dr. EBAW is or was a medical man of some the list of belauded reforms that we have eminence. An M.D. of London, M.R.C.S., noticed is that made by a Chinese gentleman M.R.C.P., Fellow and Vice-President of the at Shanghai. More than five years ago, the British Gynecological Society, and Fellow broad-minded Empress-Dowager abolished of the British Electro-Therapeutic Society, by Edict the law prohibiting the inter- he was also a specialist entrusted with marriage of Manchus and Chinese, with a particular cases at the North-West London view to promoting more friendly relations. Hospital. Cancer was apparently a hobby After more than five years, this Chinese of his, and he entertains strong opinions as gentleman appears to find satisfaction in the to the danger of surgical operations in such fact that he is able to cite three such
cases. The recognized medical journals marriages in high society, beside which having published some statements which he be has "heard some other weddings considered erroneous and dangerously took place between Manchu and Chinese misleading, he wrote to those journals—a lately," in families less influential, and so correct professional proceeding-but was left un-named. The correct figures, which not granted publicity. Whereupon, in the are scarcely to be hoped for, would be most interes's, as be thinks, of countless suffering interesting; but the inference to Le drawn women, he wrote a book on fibroid tumour, from this gentleman's observations is that and its treatment without the knife. The the rapprochement due to the Empress Royal College of Physicians taxed him with Dowager's act of 1902 is not remarkably unprofessional conduct, and the upshot was conspicuous. On the other hand we have that he resigned his degrees, and requested the assassination of the Governor of Anhui, that his name be taken off the medical EN MIN, by a Taotai who boasted that for register. The latter request was refused. ten years he had been studying how to over- The question of the perils of the operation throw the Manchus. We have not the called hysterectomy is too technical for slightest sympathy for the assassin or his publication, and`in a world where there is a friends, and We execrate his methods.
common saying that " Eurgeons are too fond There is no reason, however, why we should of using the knife," there seems little need not search out the various aspects of the to quote statistics to show that the mortality incident, and consider the same with as of the operating table is heavy. The larger much detachment as possible. The first question, speaking publicly as well as outcry over such incidents, whether the professionally, is opened up of whether the terrorists be Chinese, Russian, Spanish, or hierarchy that rules the profession in matters other, is one of shuddering horror. Those of etiquete and conduct is an honest who will cheerfully write and talk of such administration, or whether it betrays the wars as the Busso-Japanese, and allow "la characteristics of a priesteraft, Being gloire" to obscure the wholesale butchery, curious on this point, we obtained a copy of are wont to prate on such occasions as this Dr. SHAW's explanation, a 246-page book of "The sanctity of human life." There is a entitled Medical Priesteraft, a National cynical saying that a man who steals Peril." Full of his grievances, we find the pillions is less contemned than the petty author somewhat prolix, but at the same thief, and it would seem that a like view time there is no obscuring of his allegation is taken of murder. The few victims that the British Medical Association has of a bomb provoke more tears than already become "a meuace to professional the thousands of mutilated corpses buddled liberty" and "inimical to the public wea!." up in the trenches of the battlefield. It is Truth has committed itself to the statement indeed very bad, this bomb and revolver that the gravamen of Dr. SHAW's offence business, and nothing can excuse it; but lies in the fact that he rejects the current we would that the same public sentiment opinion of the profession in a matter of pro- would be forthcoming to stand in the way found importance, and that, being silenced of such light-hearted provocations to war as by a sort of professional boycott, he appeals we are lately observing. The "sanctity of directly to the public by showing them human life" is wholesale as well as retail, what he believes to be the truth; and if it be admitted at all. The native detesto punish this the professional machinery tation of the deed has not been expressed has been set in motion. If that be so, in such terms, however. Apparently the the public has a direct interest in the sanctity of human life is a meaningless matter. But we do not think this book
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will help the public much, for the simple reason that the public will not read so much to decide a comparatively simple issue. With regard to the professional features of the charge against Dr. SHAW, we feel justified in saying at once that he
sing policy or principle of the medical is a victim of hypocrisy. The non-adverti profession is glaringly evaded by the whole squad, high and low, but with perhaps the worst examples among those whose eminence would argue they need advertise- ment least, There is certainly as much of the ad captandum vulgus in a letter to the Lancet as in a book on fibroid tumour dedicated to the laity, and the Lancet letter is likely to be read by a greater proportion of the laity than such a book would be. Medicine is a tra le or business like most other things, and it is conducted by human beings with or dinary human needs. There are undoubtedly men clever at their work, and there are others who are-well, not clever. None of them is infallible, and in such a study a certain caution and deliberation in accepting new theories is desirable. On this ground we can excuse, if we cannot defend, the general attitude of orthodoxy to beterodoxy. Dr. SHAW has the misfortune to be hetero- dox at present. Some day, perhaps, when he is no longer above ground to derive satisfaction from the fact, his views will be orthodox. Medical science has progressed that way. In 1778 Dr. JOHN BROWN of Edinburgh was formally ostracised for attacking the indiscriminate practice of blood-letting, but nowadays the nickname of "
leech
as applied to the professiou would hardly be understood-unless (may we hint) by those who have had to pay big fees to specialists! It seems rather mean of Dr. SHAW to tell stories against his own profession, but the provocation be has received has made him lavish of anecdotes which, we confess, we have read with some relis. We may close our reference with one specimen :
was
"A well-known doctor, now retired from active practice, told the writer the following inci leat. A patient of his, thinking to get an independent opinion, went to a certain throat specialist on his own account.
he specialist operation took a very serious view of the case. An cost the patient? He could not at first say, nece.sary. What would it
bat when pressed, the sum of sixty guineas Was named. The patient went back to his medical friend in great distress, and the doctor there- apon wrote to the specialist, asking what home. The specialist answered:"Paint his Treatment he could carry out for the patient at
he is not well in a fortnight, let me see him throat twice a day with chloride of zinc, and if again."
We
There is one very commou operation, by the way, which tempts us to use a little more space to joiu Dr. SHAW in his denunciation of the furor operativus. refer to the fashion or fid of appendi- citis. How many persons have had their liv. s risked or lost by appendicectomy, as the doctor-folk call this trick of the carver, where a dose of salts might have done, we hardly dare to calculate.
Why should it have been reserved for the last decade to fiscover the wickedness of the appendix? We hold the opinion, and got it before we ever heard of Dr. SHAW, that professional interest in that trick of the trade accounts for the apparent increase in appendicitis, and we hop tha: Sir FREDERICK TRAVES, whose much advertised attendance on King EDWARD was partly responsible for the furore, will ge: as good a hearing for the warning he has since felt it necessary to issue, against the abuse of this surgical operation. It is suggested by Dr. SHAW, and we have little hesitation in accepting
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