8 William Carlos Williams — "The Use of Force" (1938)

The story: a doctor narrates a house call to a poor farm family: the Olson child, feverish for days, refuses to open her mouth for the diphtheria examination. Persuasion fails; the parents' authority fails; and the doctor — with the parents' pinioned help — forces the spatula between her clenched teeth, at the cost of blood and screams, to find the membrane: the diphtheria, and the child's life, revealed. And the narrator confesses the shameful remainder: in the fury of force, he enjoyed the attack — "a criminal at bay," the brute pleasure beneath the benevolence. Themes (the legalunit's densest short text):consent and its absence (the child's refusal; the parents' consent — who may consent for whom?); necessity and proportionality (justified force — the least harm to avert a greater; the doctrine behind emergency treatment today); professional power and itsshadow (the confession of enjoyment: abuse potential inside every benevolent authority — police, doctors, teachers, judges — the institutional-design lesson); class and deference (the poor parents' shame and submission before the professional). Law connection: medical law's battery line (treatment without consent — Nepal's Criminal Code and the physician's civil liability); informed consent's development; the emergency exception; and the ethics of professionals — Jurisprudence Unit 5's "just force" in a five-page mirror.