We have come to the parting of the ways, where it becomes the bounden duty of every earnest, fair-minded physician to cast off the manacles of professional caste and secret obligation and to advance with open mind across the wholesome confines of eternal truth.  This as much in their own interest as in that of their patients.  For there is disaffection in the once solid phalanx, and we find strictures such as these in the standard works of the profession:  “It cannot be denied that practitioners in medicine stand too low in the scale of public estimation and, something is rotten in the State of Denmark.”

A series of articles appearing recently, in the English Review, from the daring and masterly pen of George Bernard Shaw, deals with the subject with an ungloved hand, taking as opportunity a vitriolic controversy recently raging between exalted lights of the medical profession in London, which raises abruptly the long-drawn curtain of mystery and exposes the secret skeleton to the view of a wondering world.  Speaking of the absolute, autocratic powers of the medical monopoly and the superstitious, hopeless complacency of the public, the writer says:  “The assumption is that the ‘registered doctor’ or surgeon knows everything that is known, and can do everything that is to be done.  This means that the dogmas of omniscience, omnipotence and infallibility, and something very like the theory of the apostolic succession and kingship by anointment, have recovered in medicine the grip they have lost in theology and politics.  This would not matter if the ‘legally qualified doctor’ was a completely qualified healer:  but this is not the case; far from it.  Dissatisfaction with the orthodox methods and technique is so widespread that the supply of technically qualified unregistered practitioners is insufficient for the demand....  The reputation of the unregistered specialist is usually well founded. He must deliver the goods. He cannot live by the faith of his patients in a string of letters after his name.”

From all sides the same dissatisfaction is told showing that, with the sick and simple majority, what is termed “the attractive bed-side manner” of the polished practitioner has vastly out-weighed—­in the past—­the more vital advantage of superior skill on the part of practitioners of the drugless and natural systems which are winning their way to favour, in spite of the organized opposition of the orthodox profession and the powerful “vested interests” of the medicine-men.

To return to the subject proper:  The summing up as to the efficacy of inoculation, drugs, serums and specifics for Influenza may best be found in the supplements to the U.S.  Public Health reports, and vouched for by Surgeon-General Rupert Blue and the Government experts: 

“Since we are uncertain of the primary cause of Influenza, no form of inoculation can be guaranteed to protect against the disease itself.”  “No drug has as yet been proved to have any specific influence as a preventive of influenza.