Mr. Elbert Hubbard on vaccination : a critical examination : a special article / [Kenneth W. Millican].
- Millican, Kenneth William, 1853-1915.
- Date:
- [1907]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Mr. Elbert Hubbard on vaccination : a critical examination : a special article / [Kenneth W. Millican]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![tor will deny. Also—the soft pedal there, profes- sor, please—it is a fact that doctors occasionally overcome the temptation by succumbing to it. This statement is simply a truism of human nature in its entirety asserted of a part thereof as though it applied only to that part. In the same sense that all people prevaricate as a mere conventionalism—as when, for instance, one writes “My dear Sir” to a person for whom one entertains no trace of affection whatever, or gives the order for “not at home” when one means simply an unwillingness to be disturbed by visitors, and in a hundred other little ways; or, as when one refrains from say- ing all that would truthfully be said if one gave utterance to all one’s convictions—as for instance when Mr. Hubbard in this identical Philistine, describing his position at a banquet between a bishop of the Episcopal church and one of the Roman Catholic church, says “while I refrained from any reference to Torquemada, Savonarola, Pope Alexander Borgia and Henry the Ate [Me], they in turn had only words of kindness for Goliath,” etc.; or yet again, as when out of kindly and well bred consideration for others, one looks pleas- ant and replies “All right, thanks” to the ques- tion how we find that [cheap and nasty] ci- gar, or says “delicious” when the new young housewife asks us what we think of her coffee; in any one of these senses doctors, like nearly all other mortals, are in not only constant temptation to prevaricate, both in and out of their professional duties, but occasionally “overcome it by succumbing to it.”](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2247982x_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
