A surgeon was considering the purchase of a very expensive scalpel, and decided to test it before buying.

He started with general-purpose knife functions. “This scalpel might be a special kind of knife, but it is a knife, after all, and it should function as a knife.”

So the surgeon sliced up an apple with it. Then he used it to whittle a stick into a tiny toy soldier. Then he made a wood engraving with it, tapping on it its handle with a small hammer, using its tip as a fine chisel. Then he used it to pry open a paint can.

The scalpel really did make an adequate all-purpose knife.

Then he tried to operate on a patient’s heart. He found it rough and imprecise. “I might as well be using a jack-knife. This confirms what I always suspected. Why pay for an expensive scalpel when a jack-knife works just as well?”

(“Besides,” he said to the nurse, wheeling the dead patient out of his operating room, “our surgery business has really been slowing down.”)