Man is not a reasoning being (C) W. H. Bates, 1920

[glocka]

"Between 1886 and 1891 I was a lecturer at the postgraduate hospital and medical school. The head of the institution was Dr. D. B. St. John Rusa. He was the author of many books and was honored and respected by the whole medical profession. At the school they had got the habit of putting glasses on the nearsighted doctors and I had got the habit of curing them without glasses. It was naturally annoying to a man who had put glasses on a student to have him appear at lectures without them and say that Dr. Bates had cured him. Dr. Rusa found it particularly annoying and the trouble reached a climax one evening at the annual banquet of the faculty when in the presence of 150 doctors, he suddenly poured out the vile of his wrath upon my head.

"He said that I was injuring the reputation of the postgraduate by claiming to cure myopia. Everyone knew that Donders said it was incurable. And I had no right to claim that I knew more than Donders. I reminded him that some of the men I had cured had been fitted with glasses by himself. He replied that if he had said they had myopia, he had made a mistake. I suggested further investigation. 'Fit some more doctors with glasses for myopia,' I said, 'And I will cure them. 'It is easy for you to examine them afterward and see if the cure is genuine.' This method did not appeal to him, however, he repeated that it was impossible to cure myopia and to prove that it was impossible, he expelled me from the postgraduate, even the privilege of resignation being denied me.

"The fact is that except in rare cases, man is not a reasoning being. He is dominated by authority and when facts are not in accord with the view imposed by authority, so much the worse for the facts. They may and indeed must win in the long run, but in the meantime the world gropes needlessly in the darkness and endures much suffering that might have been avoided."