Frédéric Bastiat：Economic Sophisms, Excerpt 32

The physician, for example, does not bake his own bread, or manufacture his own instruments, or weave or make his own coat. Others do these things for him, and in return he treats the diseases with which his patients are afflicted. The more numerous, severe, and frequent these diseases are, the more others consent, and are obliged, to do for his personal comfort. Regarding it from this point of view, disease, that general obstacle to human happiness, becomes a cause of material prosperity to the individual physician. The same argument applies to all producers in their several departments. The shipowner derives his profits from the obstacle called _distance_; the agriculturist from that called _hunger_; the manufacturer of cloth from that called _cold_; the schoolmaster lives upon _ignorance_; the lapidary upon _vanity_; the attorney on _cupidity_; the notary upon possible _bad faith_,--just as the physician lives upon the diseases of men. It is quite true, therefore, that each profession has an immediate interest in the continuation, nay in the extension, of the special obstacle which it is its business to combat.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44145
Locator：Excerpt 32 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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