CHAPTER 4

One evening the doctor on coming home tossed a card over to Jenkins with the remark, “Better come to the lecture and hear me talk the money out of the public pocket.”

Jenkins looked at the card and saw it admitted him at 8 p. m. on the coming Thursday evening to a lecture on Scientific Research by Sir Charles Smith-Brown, Dsc. M.D., etc., etc. Jenkins thanked him and put the card in his pocket and on the next Thursday he presented his ticket punctually at the time and place appointed.

The small lecture room was already well filled when Jenkins entered and he noticed that the first four or five rows of seats were railed off by a crimson cord from the rest and in these were seated people that Jenkins recognized immediately as “gentlefolk.” They were all very well dressed in semi-evening dress and had, for the most part, nice kind-looking intelligent faces. Jenkins spirits rose as he saw them.

“Surely they can’t easily be humbugged,” he thought, “they’ve been taught to read and think and had plenty of time for schooling.”

He slipped quietly into a vacant seat he saw some rows back of the red cord. Here the people were all in hats and coats and had evidently come on foot to the meeting. Their faces were harder looking than those in front but they also looked intelligent, interested and alert. Jenkins particularly liked the look of his neighbour. A hard working man he should think, perhaps a small tradesman running his own business or perhaps a clerk, anyway he looked keen and quick as a man with his own decided ideas and opinions.

The platform was now filling up with figures: the ladies resplendent in gay coloured Opera cloaks and wearing jewels in their beautifully dressed hair, the men showing large expanses of shirt front. Among these Jenkins noted the sleek form of the doctor and a glow of hatred seemed to spread through him as he noted the suave smile on the thin lips and the benign expression of the whole face so different from the set, savage stare Jenkins was familiar with as the man worked in his laboratory, tearing muscle and nerve out of quivering flesh.

“Blasted hypocrite,” he thought furiously to himself and then he noted the eyes of his neighbour quickly passing over the platform as the stately and imposing figures filed onto it quietly and took their appointed seats.

“Who are they all?” he asked in an undertone of the keen faced one.

“Regular swells, all of them,” the man returned in the same discreet voice which was quick like his eyes. “That’s the Marquis of Sedlestone in the chair and that’s Lord and Lord and Lord,” he ran off the names so quickly Jenkins could hardly catch them. “He’s gulled them all. They all believe in him and this beastly Research. That’s what beats me. How they can be such fools.”

Jenkins nodded sympathetically. He felt happier. Evidently this man beside him knew the truth of things. He longed intensely to confide in him and tell him what _he_ knew but he controlled the impulse. If he was to carry out successfully his great scheme absolute secrecy and concealment of his own feelings was necessary. There was no time for further talk in any case for after a few preliminaries on the platform had been arranged, there was the silver tinkle of a bell and the Marquis of Sedlestone rose to address the audience.

There was absolute silence in the hall and Jenkins listened breathlessly to every word.

“My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, we have the privilege to-night of being gathered together to listen to one of the most distinguished men of our time, Sir Charles Brown-Smith, M.D. Dsc. Science may be said to be the leading force in the world to-day and in him we see one of its most brilliant exponents.” (Applause.) “Science to-day is advancing with the steps of a giant. Disease and decay are fading, diminishing, vanishing before it.”

“What bosh all that is when they can’t cure a common cold,” thought Jenkins.

“Maladies are disappearing. Yellow fever is conquered, consumption all but conquered, cancer--”

“Is increasing,” shouted a voice at the back of the hall.

There was some laughter in the back seats but only a slight offended rustle from the front rows.

“Alas! Yes,” continued the suave well-modulated voice from the platform. “As my friend at the back of the hall has remarked, cancer is increasing and that proves that more research is needed, more patient labour, more funds, more encouragement for those noble men and women who--”

“You’ve been at it now over twenty years,” interrupted the voice in a dominant tone that filled the hall, “and had buckets of money poured into it, without an atom of result, except that cancer is spreading everywhere all the time, and it’s you people who are doing it. You’re not stopping it: you’re spreading it with your beastly laboratories all full of animals dying of it. Aren’t they breathing out cancer all the time? Aren’t their cages full of it? Aren’t the men who look after them carrying cancer germs with them everywhere?”

While these strident questions were being hurled at him, the noble Marquis had waited silent on the platform, looking slightly annoyed and after a second or two he turned and made some observation to a young man sitting behind him, who rose immediately and left the platform by its side door. There had been some applause from various parts of the hall as these questions full of scalding contempt had been shouted out and heads were turned and necks craned to see who the interrupter was. Only the front rows sat unmoved as if they had not heard, their eyes fixed before them waiting for the authorised speaker to continue and a few seconds after the young man had disappeared from the platform, there was a violent scuffle at the back of the room. Between two stout men of the law the interrupter was unceremoniously bundled out.

“There’s the Free Speech of England to-day,” came a caustic whisper from Jenkins’ bright-eyed neighbour, “if ever there’s a revolution in England, it’ll be these damned medical men who are at the bottom of it.”

Jenkins again nodded in silence. The noble Marquis was proceeding.

“As I was saying, Science had made the most remarkable advances and suffering Humanity could turn its eyes hopefully to the future where disease would be stamped out, pain practically abolished, and the onset of old age delayed by 50 or 70 years. But I will not detain you longer. I will leave to our distinguished lecturer the pleasing task of explaining to you how these marvels will be accomplished.”

“Awful tosh,” murmured keen-eyes as the noble Marquis took his seat and Sir Charles Brown-Smith rose to address the meeting.

“My Lords, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “my noble friend has promised you that I shall tell you some of the most recent marvels Science has accomplished and I will not disappoint you, but first I should like to say a few words on that vexed question--experiments on living animals. Some evilly disposed persons have recently been trying to oppose the glorious march of Science by suggesting that there is cruelty connected with these experiments that are so vital to our work, so necessary to its success, so far reaching in their results for suffering humanity. I wish now to state that in my work I am frequently obliged to resort to these experiments and also to witness them in the studies of others and I can confidently assure you that there is not an atom of cruelty connected with them.” Here the doctor paused and beamed upon his docile audience through his large spectacles while a gentle smile suffused his whole benign countenance. A warm murmur of grateful applause rose from the seats beyond the red cord: the mass of the people at the back listened in sullen silence: an indrawn breath of sheer astonishment from Jenkins greeted this stupendous lie.

“The animals,” continued the doctor, “who have the honour of being permitted to share in this glorious work, are cared for with devoted attention, no effort is spared in seeing that they are properly housed and well fed. They have every comfort and to see them sporting behind the bars of their spacious cages one would imagine they were rejoicing in their great destiny.”

Jenkins, on hearing this, simply turned in his chair, open mouthed to his companion of the keen eyes, and met their clear quizzical gaze fixed upon him.

“Good one, that eh?” keen-eyes murmured.

“Ananias!” shouted an unregenerate person at the back of the hall, “what about your starving experiments?”

The doctor deigned no reply and the former scuffling sounds being repeated, the audience knew that the interrupter had been removed and the English tradition of liberty again upheld.

“Well fed, well cared for, watched over,” continued the doctor blandly, “and all they have to suffer is the trifling discomfort of a quick prick from an inoculating needle or a variation of their usual diet.”

As these lies poured smoothly forth in the great man’s mellow voice, Jenkins saw before him the rows of desolate zinc floored cages, each with its tortured inmate moaning out its life, he saw the puppies starving and distorted beyond recognition in the experiment for rickets, the dog blinded and sitting in hopeless agonies because his eyes had been taken to graft into another dog’s sockets, the monkeys wasted to a skeleton or hugely swelled, going blind and semi-paralysed because their thyroid gland had been cut out, all these horrible sights rose before him and he gazed at the speaker, stupefied and dumb.

His neighbour spoke in a low voice in his ear, very low because he had no wish to be turned out. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the red cord.

“Why on earth they don’t see that he’s guying them, beats me,” he said.

“So now let us dismiss this myth of cruelty from our mind, let us remember that great men are rarely cruel and let us refuse to believe these unjust libels that ignorant and prejudiced people are so wantonly spreading.” Here the doctor’s voice took on a mild severity and the red corders all warmly applauded.

The speaker proceeded.

“I have mentioned how this myth of cruelty impedes the progress of Science but I shall now touch upon something that is even more obstructive to our success: something that is constantly hampering us in our forward march, and that is in this country the absence of compulsion. Yes, my friends, it is true: we are suffering from too much liberty. Liberty is a very excellent thing, a fine thing, but it can be pushed too far, we can have too much of it.”

“_Never_,” from the back benches.

“Pardon me, we can have too much even of liberty. Liberty which harms ourselves, liberty which harms others must be curtailed. I say unhesitatingly that liberty to refuse the untold benefits of vaccination, of inoculation, is an evil. Those who are so blind as to fail to see the benefits, for themselves, should be forced to accept them. I look forward personally to that time, not I trust, far distant, when like our great sister nation, America, we shall have compulsion for everything that is now left to the ignorant individual to decide for himself.”

At this point the red corders began to move uneasily in their chairs and look at each other. They were not quite so sure about all this.

“What can the individual know about the uses or the benefits of the processes offered to him, which he so often rashly and fatally refuses? Is it fair to throw the burden of deciding upon him? How far better that the man of Science, the man who knows, should decide for him and _compel_ him to accept the inestimable blessings of Science! I am pleased to say there is a great forward movement to be noticed lately in this direction, no one can enter the Army or the Navy or any public service, nor can a boy go to a public school without being vaccinated for instance, very excellent, very admirable and now that we have the Ministry of Health we may look forward to suitable laws being passed which will bring every individual, no matter of what class or station under the grasp of the healing hand of Science. Personally I think, and I hope, it will not be long before that simple and so necessary operation of taking out the tonsils will be made compulsory.”

“I should like to say a word,” came a voice from the back and it was so hollow, so sepulchral that it attracted instant attention and even the red corders looked round to see to whom it belonged.

A young man of a pallid countenance and hollow cheeks was standing up and the doctor seeing the audience was interested and would like to hear what the interrupter had to say, affected to be quite willing and waited for him to continue.

“I was well and strong,” proceeded the pale cheeked one in his remarkable voice which went all over the hall, “till a medical chap looked down my throat and advised me to have my tonsils cut out. I didn’t know what I was in for and went to a hospital and had it done. It’s a horrible operation and I suffered for a week after. Well, it’s done I think and that’s that. But it wasn’t over as I thought. My tonsils grow now since they’ve been cut. In a year I was told they must be done again and now I’ve been through that damned thing _five times_. I lose a lot of blood each time over it, it gets on my nerves, and I’m a wreck. That’s what cutting out tonsils has done for me. And I know it’s wrong now. The tonsils are filters put in our throats to filter the air before it reaches the lungs and to stop bad germs going further. I know now what Nature put ’em there for and I say it’s a crying shame to take them out.”

This last was shouted defiantly and the young man paler than ever before and with beads of sweat standing out on his corpse-like countenance sat down.

There was dead silence for a moment in the hall where Truth for a second had flitted through the fog of lies rising from the platform and rent it with her sharp wings.

Then the doctor, very suave, very smiling, took up his parable again.

“My young friend has indeed suffered and we must extend our sympathies to him. At the same time we must not allow our judgment to be influenced by one unfortunate accidental case, when we know that millions are benefited.”

“Who says they are?” shouted back the young man. “Only you doctor people, not those who’ve been through it!”

“And who should know better than the doctors?” blandly returned the lecturer. “That is just the very point I was going to elaborate when my young friend interrupted me. Perhaps he himself has been benefited, perhaps had he not taken the first advice he would have been now suffering from some malady worse than the mere loss of his tonsils, perhaps he would not have been here at all.”

The red corders nodded solemnly at this and gave some faint indications of applause. In the back seats the young man muttered “Rot,” but the doctor was proceeding with his lecture and the young man and Truth were definitely squashed.

Jenkins sat in his seat wondering. Had the young man made any impression on the red corders or not? He thought not. They had come there determined to hear the doctor, determined to hear no one else. They were determined to believe in him and to refuse to believe anyone else. That was their attitude. The doctor went on.

“To compel people to be healthy and happy surely that is what the laws should aim at and while now having grown up in our present lax system of pleasing himself, the individual may feel it hard to have his liberty curtailed I look forward to the future in which the child having been brought up on scientific principles from the first will not miss what he has never had--his liberty. Yes, that is the ideal, ladies and gentlemen, the child, we shall begin with the child. We shall take him from the cradle, nay more we shall deal with the mother beforehand, so that his pre-natal welfare will be studied. In the future we shall no longer see the poor neglected child clinging to the hand of its slatternly mother and sucking at the noxious sweets she has in her ignorance bought for it. No! We shall see a little being, gently led by a sweet faced hospital nurse, his eyes carefully protected by glasses, his pearly teeth already stopped with gold and supported by plates. No dirty clothes to harbor disease about him, he is dressed in the neat and simple uniform provided by the State. And within his little frame has been as carefully tended, his tonsils removed he need not dread tonsillitis, his appendix taken away what cause has he to fear appendicitis, _X_-rayed every week, no disease can approach him unperceived. Vaccinated every year against small-pox, inoculated frequently for typhoid and all the murderous maladies that surround us, here is my ideal little citizen of the future. He faces life armed by Science against all ills. Is it not an inspiring picture?”

The doctor paused and beamed in a fatherly way as if the little monstrosity he had conjured up by his words were on the platform, before him.

The red corders gave some applause, there was dead silence at the back for a second, then a voice asked:

“What about his little legs and arms, Mister, has he got ’em still, or have they been sawn off and artificial ones hooked on?”

Loud laughter from all the back benches greeted this interruption. When it had subsided the doctor replied gravely:

“Certainly nothing would be done to remove his limbs unnecessarily, if on the other hand any accident happened to him there are artificial limbs in readiness so carefully thought out, so exquisitely fashioned that they function nearly as well as the natural ones.”

“Rats!” came an angry voice from the wooden benches and a young man sprang to his feet. He looked like an ex-soldier, his face was pale and thin with a hectic flush burning on his cheek-bones. One sleeve hung empty by his side.

“Look at me!” he shouted, “I had my arm taken off in the war by some of you devils. Wasn’t a bit necessary, ordinary nursing would have saved it. But what’s that to you? You don’t care for flesh and blood, you only care for your devilish devices. I had a flesh wound and off you took my arm and gave me a false one, a thing all straps and buckles and springs that tortured me like hell. I was kept on view and taught to pick up a pin when the Queen came to see me. What good’s that to me? The whole thing fell to pieces after a week or two. You leave us alone and our children too. We don’t want your spectacles and your false teeth and your _X_-rays. Leave our young ’uns alone as God made ’em. That’s what I say.” He sat down and all those at the back applauded loudly.

The doctor on the platform gave his shoulders an infinitesimal shrug and waited in silence until the storm had subsided. Then he continued in a pained voice, as one grieved by the deep ingratitude of the world.

“Again I can only say we must not judge from unfortunate exceptions. Artificial limbs are and have been and will always be a great boon to humanity.”

“We prefer to keep our own, thank you!” retorted the young man, which remark the doctor passed over with a patient air and continued his lecture.

There was nothing new in it. The same old rubbish that is always set afloat by the doctors and scientific men and then repeated pompously from mouth to mouth without examination by the asses in society was duly brought forward here.

As the doctor himself with his usual cynicism would have remarked, “Why take the trouble to invent a new lie when you can still gull the public with the old one?”

He cited the great benefits that Science had conferred on humanity in the War, how inoculation had saved the troops from typhoid without explaining why a hundred thousand had died after Gallipoli.

He dilated on the wonderful advantages of the _X_-ray without mentioning the countless victims who had been slowly roasted to death under it.

He expatiated on anti-toxin cures of diphtheria without explaining why the death rate from diphtheria had gone up and not down since its use and without mentioning that Bella Donna is a specific for that disease and there is no need whatever for anti-toxin which involves the most hideous suffering to horses.

Lies and lies and more lies flowed from his lips until it seemed to Jenkins he got choked with them. A hurried sip of water and he brought his speech to a close with the usual appeal for more funds for Research, that noble work in which thousands of selfless men and women (like himself, he implied) were spending their lives. After that came some whisper and a little fluttering pause. Then the Chairman announced amidst applause from the red corders that a cheque for 50,000 pounds had been received from a member of the audience who wished to remain anonymous, for the splendid work--the direct result of the doctor’s moving address.

With hissing and booing the company at the back got on to their feet and made for the doors.

Jenkins and his neighbour went out together. A line of well appointed, lighted motors stood outside. The two men paused as if with one accord and waited watching the well dressed crowd come out, get into their cars and roll smoothly away.

“There they go,” keen-eyes said bitterly, “home to sleep in their downy beds or to eat and drink with never a thought of the agony of the poor suffering animals. Fools! Led by the nose by that criminal lunatic that’s been telling them all that rubbish this evening. And they’ve _got_ the brains to see through it all, that’s what makes me so mad with them. It’s not as if they were stupid or uneducated and _couldn’t_ think for themselves. They _won’t_ think.” He stopped and drew a pipe from his pocket and began filling it and ramming in the tobacco. “I used to think well of the upper classes at one time. I know they are unselfish and they work hard lots of them and do a lot of good to others but the way they’ve swallowed all this cant about Scientific Research, the way they shut their eyes and ears to the truth has disgusted me with them. We’ve got regular devil-worship in England now. What these so-called scientific chaps do in their laboratories is appalling. It’s just sheer lust of killing and torturing, lust run wild and those fools patronise it and _because_ they patronise it, every man-jack in the Kingdom, got to pay for it. We’ve got to struggle along and pay taxes that fellows like this Smith-Brown may enjoy themselves wallowing in a horrible vice. I tell you I’ve read about devil-worship in Africa and whole communities being under the thumb of a few priests and we’ve jolly well got exactly the same thing going on in England to-day. The health of the country is being ruined, the blood and the brains of the people all messed up by the filthy inoculations and vaccinations and we are breeding more and more men with this lust in their brains for tearing living things to pieces and those people are responsible for all this.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the departing motors gliding away soundlessly bearing their freights of humanity, good hearted, kindly persons for the most part, but utterly blinded by a foolish and fanatical belief: just as completely as the simple savage peoples of darkest Africa are blinded by their medicine men when they order them to gash their breasts and throw their mutilated babies into the flames.

“What can we do?” pursued keen-eyes as the two men turned away into the darkness of the wet streets. “We’re poor, we can’t do anything. We can’t get at the public to tell it what’s going on. If we’re ill we’re lugged off to these beastly hospitals and cut up alive, we’re forced to send our children to school and the doctors there cut’em about as they like, what can we do? But those people, they _could_ alter things, one of those lords owns a newspaper, if he studied the thing up, he could set it all out in his paper and squash the whole thing. He could show up these scientific men and what they do. He could show that this whole craze for torturing animals was just a form of lunacy. The nation wouldn’t support it for two minutes if it were once told what it was. But he does nothing, he uses his paper just to help the thing on. Then those other lords, they could speak in their House and say outright what it was--just devil-worship--but they allow themselves to be humbugged like all the rest of the fools.”

After a pause keen-eyes started again in his quick fiery way.

“What I keep on hoping is that the medical profession itself will see what a mistake they are making. Already a number of doctors have declared themselves against experiments on animals. That’s the root of the whole trouble. Experiments on living animals. The doctors are wrongly trained from the beginning. The young men, the medical students in their classes, at their lectures, see a living animal being operated upon, being cut up, before them. Sometimes it is under an anaesthetic, sometimes partially so, sometimes not at all. They are taught that this is right, they are trained to cut the animal up alive themselves. They are trained to see the animal writhing and struggling in its helpless agonies and shown how to inflict them. These men are young men, they are just at that age when the brain is most susceptible to impressions, when the character is forming, when there are terrible impulses towards evil and equally great yearnings toward good. It is quite easy to see what an effect these classes must have upon them, these spectacles of the living pulsating form of an animal being torn in pieces, by an older man, who is evidently absolutely indifferent to the horrible suffering he is causing. And this effect is evil. At first many of these young men do feel horror at the sight, they feel the normal sympathy everyone should feel at the sight of suffering. Then they are jeered at by their older companions. They are told that callous man who is sinking his knife between muscle and bone cutting the nerves of the poor moaning victim is doing _right_ and a great man. Thus they are initiated into the devil worship. Sometimes the young students overcome by the revolt of all their natural instincts against it, faint at the revolting sight. They are carried out of the class room and revived. By the order of the professor they are brought back and _made_ to witness the lingering torments of the animal on the operating-table They are being hardened. Day by day they are trained thus and gradually their normal feelings begin to change. From sickness and revolt at the horrors they see done, they come to a liking for them, a wish to participate in them, they become abnormal. Their brains having been shocked at the most sensitive age, they become deflected from their true balance. Those feelings of justice, mercy, sympathy and pity which distinguish the worthy human being disappear and the normal young man who commenced his medical course is at the end of it an abnormal ill balanced creature with that impulse towards cruelty we notice in the monkey highly developed and the qualities of man carefully trained out of his crooked brain. And it is from this material we make our doctors! The men we call in to treat our beloved sick, to minister to our dear ones when dying! Heavens, what a farce! Doctors above all men should be highly trained in sympathy and justice. Nothing should be allowed to cloud or shock the brain of the young medical student. A clear judgment, great power of observation, great sympathy with all suffering, reverence for life. These are the qualities we want in our doctors and should therefore be cultivated in our medical students. All that is necessary for the healing of the human body can be learned from the careful observation of that body in health and in sickness and in death. Anatomy can be far better taught by cutting up the dead human body than the living animal.”

He stopped and there was silence between them as they plodded on. Jenkins felt too crushed and wretched to be able to collect his thoughts and he knew it was not safe for him, with his ultimate object in view, to reveal himself or his sentiments to anyone. He felt vaguely comforted by the companionship of this other man who evidently, like himself, knew the truth, but he dared not confide in him. He could only listen in silence. The other did not seem to mind. He appeared to know instinctively that Jenkins was of one mind with himself and he asked no questions. At the corner of Oxford Street he stopped and held out his hand.

“I wait here,” he said, “my bus’ll be along presently. Goodnight, it’s a bad business but remember this, _it can’t last_. The day will come when this gigantic fraud on the public, this Scientific Research, will be exposed. We mayn’t be here to see it, worse luck, for it will take a long time but it must come. All frauds come to the same end.”

Jenkins grasped his hand and wrung it, the kind keen eyes met his for a moment. Then they had parted and Jenkins was drifting down a side street alone with his hands driven down deep into the pockets of his overcoat and clenched there.

What _could_ he do, what _could_ he do to unveil this stupendous lie? To raise this flimsy curtain of a _name_ and show the filthy loathsome lust that cowered behind it. He walked and walked desperately up one street and down another. He did not know or care where he went. He would walk through the night and only turn up at this loathsome work in the morning. The utter horror of the whole thing enveloped him like a cloud and his terrible impotence in the matter seemed like something stifling suffocating him. He believed he could kill the doctor and so save a certain amount of horrible suffering but that was so little against the whole mass of evil and error that a small band of men had managed to let loose upon the world. For the whole world was affected. This folly of blind belief in the words of men who dubbed themselves wise and learned, beneficent and infallible, had spread its sickly snare not over one country nor quarter but over the whole world. Hospitals, laboratories are found everywhere and though there were wise and thinking people also everywhere they did not seem numerous enough nor strong enough to stop the march of Evil. Would the day of deliverance ever come? He wondered dismally as keen-eyes had predicted. For the present this devil-worship was all on the up-grade. More taxes were being levied, more money thrown into the hands of the medicine men, more hospitals being built, more research laboratories being endowed. Jenkins wandered on through the damp, black streets depressed to the very uttermost. That lecture had pushed him down to the very depths of despair, just as Doctor Smith-Brown had cynically foreseen it would do. He saw that Jenkins had still some faith in the common sense of ordinary people. The doctor determined he should attend the lecture and see for himself how easily and completely they were taken in and deluded. Towards morning, stiff and aching in every limb he got back to the laboratory. It was dark and cold: fires and lights were out and a low moaning of unutterable anguish filled the darkness. Jenkins went heavily up the stairs to his bed, wretched beyond description, oppressed by the wickedness of one half of the world and the stupidity of the other half.