him to suicide.
 This Old Doctor tells you how he “treats” his patients. Yes, he says he “treats” them.
 Doctors used to talk differently in the old days from what they do now. When a doctor used to say that he was going to treat you, you expected him to take you into a saloon and buy you a drink; but in these days when he says he is going to treat you he takes you into a bank and skins you.
 The people of this country have gotten to enjoy a skin game in these days. Old Doc Financier has a way of tickling them when he skins them. They like it so well that they pay him fees and dues to skin them. Can you beat that for a slick doctor? He is about the smoothest thing that ever tickled a donkey out of his feed.
 You know, sometimes I think that I am the old doctor’s son. I have a notion we may send him on a vacation and that while he is away I am going to cure you. Yes, I can cure the American people if we can only get Old Doc Financier away for awhile. You understand, of course, that you are his live corpse and that when I cure you that he will lose his meal ticket, don’t you?
 You know, if I told you that right outside of your suction pump there is a little wriggler so small that you can’t see it, but if you inhale it into your body it will make you sick, and then if you looked and didn’t see anything you would think that I was off my base for making such a statement, wouldn’t you?
 Then if I came back sometime afterward and found you just recovering from a severe illness and said to you, “Didn’t I tell you if that little microbe ever got into you it would make you sick? Now, let me tell you how to cure you.”
 What would you say?
 Would you say, “I am getting better now; I don’t need any cure; just leave me alone. I was in the hospital, but I’m all right now; just feel a little shaky around the knees, that’s all.”
 Then if I said to you, “Now listen, you got sick just as I told you you would because you let that little microbe get into your body and if you don’t let me get it out of you it will grow so big and powerful that it will finally paralyze your whole body.”
 Would you say, “No, a little thing like that could never paralyze me.”
 Then suppose I came back later on and you were sitting in an arm chair, wheeled around by an attendant, and I said to you, “Well, old fellow, so the little demon has got you at last; you’re paralyzed. Your legs and your arms are twisted and your mouth is over on one side and you cannot talk straight.” And suppose I said, “Look here, you contaminated old fool, I can cure you of that disease that paralyzed you. Won’t you let me do it?”
 What would you say?
 Perhaps you would try to say, “Well, all right, try to cure me, but I don’t believe you can, eh?”
 “Well,” I’d tell you, “if I don’t cure you now that multiplication of destructive microscopic demons are going to kill you as dead