Why Should the Doctors Quarrel?

     Why should Mr. McKinley’s doctors quarrel? Why should the American people be bored and scandalized by a medical and surgical controversy in which personal feeling is evidently to play the leading part?
     It looks very much like another Sampson-Schley conflict. It will soon be said that we cannot have any great public service performed, either in war or peace, without having the men who do it fall foul of each other as to which was the biggest man of the occasion, or who was responsible for the blunders.
     People will recall that Garfield’s doctors got into a similar snarl and gave all their personal antipathies a public airing. No good came of it, and the controversy was felt to be an undignified exhibition of bad temper on the part of gentlemen who should have known better.
     Evidently there were some mistakes made at Buffalo. Those bulletins were manifestly more rosy than the facts warranted. The two mysteries of the missing bullet ought certainly to be cleared up: (1) Where is the bullet? (2) Was it poisoned?
     Beyond that the public has no concern. It being settled that no line of treatment could have saved Mr. McKinley’s life, why open a useless and wearisome public discussion as to the alleged errors in the treatment actually adopted?
     We all believe the doctors did their honest, earnest, level best. They should be satisfied to let it rest so.