This is a strong and sweeping indictment, perhaps.  Let us therefore pause for a moment whilst we consult other sources of opinion for confirmation or refutal.

And, in the wide range of American and English criteria, what corroboration do we find?  We find, as regards America, the venerable Professor Alexander H. Stevens, M.D., a member of the New York College of Physicians, writing as follows: 

     “The reason medicine has advanced so slowly is because physicians
     have studied the writings of their predecessors instead of nature.”

From England the verdict comes to this effect: 

Professor Evans, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, of London, says, in part: 

     “The Medical Practice of our day is, at the best, a most uncertain
     and unsatisfactory system:  it has neither philosophy nor common
     sense to recommend it to confidence.”

If such opinions prevail within the sacred, State-protected precincts of the profession, how long, revolted confidence exclaims—­how long before a credulous, deluded public awakens from its deep hypnotic trance.

Against Tonsil destruction three arguments stand: 

(1) That the primal intention of Universal Mind—­(sometimes termed the Soul of Being; the Spirit of All Good or, in simple reverence, “God")—­was obviously no malign intention, but an intention for good, is an axiom which will be rationally accepted, I presume, as logically and conclusively assured.

(2) That the functions of the tonsils are, in the present state of medical knowledge, practically still unknown is the deliberate and final statement made within the past few years by one of the greatest reputed authorities on the subject.

(3) That the tonsil has some important mission to fulfill is clearly demonstrated by the fact of its frequent recrudescence, or rather, the natural renewal of the organ after surgical removal—­a spontaneous physiological organic mutiny, as it were, supported by its lymphatic glandular dependents, against the reckless ignorance of medical practitioners and the perversity of the medico-cum-parental fashion of the day.

For the fact that it is a fashion, and nothing more, is unhappily fully established on ample and high authority within the medical prescriptive pale.  And, in fact, even as “The Tonsure” or shaving of the crown, became by fashion and mendicity a feature of priesthood and monastic piety, so has the slaughter of the Tonsils come to be regarded by fashion and mendacity as a feature of childhood and medical expediency and ineptitude.

Professor John D. Mackenzie, M.D., of Baltimore, a distinguished leader of the advanced school of medical science, in the course of a brilliant and exhaustive treatise on the subject written as he says, reluctantly, in the interest of the public health and safety, quotes the deliberate opinion of an equally eminent medical friend to the effect that: