National Library of Medicine blog post on 1920s medical satire

The Doctors: A Satire in Four Seizures, 1922

By Sander L. Gilman

National Library of Medicine's Circulating Now  blog April 14, 2022 https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2022/04/14/the-doctors-a-satire-in-four-seizures-1922/

Originally published in Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine, 2011.

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915), Arts and Crafts guru and follower of the British reformer William Morris (1834–96), is best known for writing the inspirational self-help essay "Message to Garcia" (1899). In the early 1900s his books could be found in many middle-class homes. He was an opponent of formal education and the professions in general, which he saw as destroying self-worth and poisoning individual initiative. The Doctors, his "satire in four seizures," is similar in tone to other contemporary critiques of medicine, such as Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science.