I, for one, should want to discuss that before signing my name to it, and I should say this:—­Why, no, that isn’t true.  There are a good many bad teeth, we all know, but a great many more good ones.  You mustn’t trust the dentists; they are all the time looking at the people who have bad teeth, and such as are suffering from toothache.  The idea that you must pull out every one of every nice young man and young woman’s natural teeth!  Poh, poh!  Nobody believes that.  This tooth must be straightened, that must be filled with gold, and this other perhaps extracted; but it must be a very rare case, if they are all so bad as to require extraction; and if they are, don’t blame the poor soul for it!  Don’t tell us, as some old dentists used to, that everybody not only always has every tooth in his head good for nothing, but that he ought to have his head cut off as a punishment for that misfortune!  No, I can’t sign Number One.  Give us Number Two.

II.  We hold that no man can be well who does not agree with our views of the efficacy of calomel, and who does not take the doses of it prescribed in our tables, as there directed.

To which I demur, questioning why it should be so, and get for answer the two following:—­

III.  Every man who does not take our prepared calomel, as prescribed by us in our Constitution and By-Laws, is and must be a mass of disease from head to foot; it being self-evident that he is simultaneously affected with Apoplexy, Arthritis, Ascites, Asphyxia, and Atrophy; with Borborygmus, Bronchitis, and Bulimia; with Cachexia, Carcinoma, and Cretinismus; and so on through the alphabet, to Xerophthalmia and Zona, with all possible and incompatible diseases which are necessary to make up a totally morbid state; and he will certainly die, if he does not take freely of our prepared calomel, to be obtained only of one of our authorized agents.

IV.  No man shall be allowed to take our prepared calomel who does not give in his solemn adhesion to each and all of the above-named and the following propositions (from ten to a hundred) and show his mouth to certain of our apothecaries, who have not studied dentistry, to examine whether all his teeth have been extracted and a new set inserted according to our regulations.

Of course, the doctors have a right to say we shan’t have any rhubarb, if we don’t sign their articles, and that, if, after signing them, we express doubts (in public) about any of them, they will cut us off from our jalap and squills,—­but then to ask a fellow not to discuss the propositions before he signs them is what I should call boiling it down a little too strong!

If we understand them, why can’t we discuss them?  If we can’t understand them, because we haven’t taken a medical degree, what the Father of Lies do they ask us to sign them for?

Just so with the graver profession.  Every now and then some of its members seem to lose common sense and common humanity.  The laymen have to keep setting the divines right constantly.  Science, for instance,—­in other words, knowledge,—­is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then religion would mean ignorance.  But it is often the antagonist of school-divinity.