Page 102 - erewhon

all the pains they can (consistently with their other duties)
to secure it for themselves. They have an extreme dislike
to marrying into what they consider unhealthy families.
They send for the straightener at once whenever they have
been guilty of anything seriously flagitious— often even if
they think that they are on the point of committing it; and
though his remedies are sometimes exceedingly painful, in-
volving close confinement for weeks, and in some cases the
most cruel physical tortures, I never heard of a reasonable
Erewhonian refusing to do what his straightener told him,
any more than of a reasonable Englishman refusing to un-
dergo even the most frightful operation, if his doctors told
him it was necessary.
We in England never shrink from telling our doctor what
is the matter with us merely through the fear that he will
hurt us. We let him do his worst upon us, and stand it with-
out a murmur, because we are not scouted for being ill, and
because we know that the doctor is doing his best to cure us,
and that he can judge of our case better than we can; but we
should conceal all illness if we were treated as the Erewho-
nians are when they have anything the matter with them;
we should do the same as with moral and intellectual dis-
eases,—we should feign health with the most consummate
art, till we were found out, and should hate a single flogging
given in the way of mere punishment more than the ampu-
tation of a limb, if it were kindly and courteously performed
from a wish to help us out of our difficulty, and with the full
consciousness on the part of the doctor that it was only by
an accident of constitution that he was not in the like plight

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