Once more I appeal to the yellow fever precedent. The first step towards
a solution of a medical, as of a political, problem is a correct
diagnosis. Then necessarily follows a long period devoted to
observation, to investigation and experiment. If, in the case of the
yellow fever, a score of years only ago an observer had pointed out the
nature of the disease and the manifest inadequacy of current theories
and prevailing methods of prevention and treatment, do you think others
would have had a right to turn upon him and demand that he instantly
prescribe a remedy which should be not only complete, but at once
recognized as such and so accepted? In the present case, as I have
already observed, from the days of Aristotle down through two and twenty
centuries, men had been experimenting in all, to them, conceivable ways,
on the government of the body politic, exactly as they experimented on
the disorders of the physical body. But only yesterday was the source of
the yellow fever, for instance, diagnosed and located, and the proper
means of prevention applied. The cancer and tuberculosis are to-day
unsolved problems. By analogy, they are inviting subjects for an
Initiative and a Referendum! Yet would any person who to-day, standing
where I stand, expressed a disbelief, at once total and contemptuous, of
such a procedure as respects them, be met by a demand for some other
panacea of immediate and guaranteed efficiency? And so with the body
politic.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57