Genre:

Reportage, Drollery

Subjects:

Psychology, Railways, Mental Illness, Medical Practitioners, Medical Treatment, Pharmaceuticals

    Reports on a 'poor stoker' who reacts to the green, white, and red lights displayed outside surgeons' doors as if they were the similarly coloured lights on locomotives. Stoker asks if surgeons' lights are designed to frighten people to death, entrap 'a stray customer', or reflect the fact that surgeons and chemists are 'compelled, by an Act of Parliament, to burn signals outside their shops to warn people of their danger'. Punch doubts the latter claim since it would mean that 'every life-pill concotor and lawyer in the kingdom' would be forced to burn red lights over his door.