“I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,”said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brainoperation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years ofpassionate, merciless, excruciating devoti
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“I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,”said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brainoperation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years ofpassionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill?That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose solequalification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulentgeneralities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes atthe point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which myyears of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice ofpatients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussionsthat preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything—except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of thepatients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctorshould have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded asirrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That aman who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute toentrust with a job in the stockyards—never occurred to those who proposedto help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have oftenwondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslaveme, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stiflemy mind—yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on anoperating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them tobelieve that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is thevirtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that theirsystem will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms andhospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a manwhose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man whoresents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”
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