Constitution (medicine)

“ Such medical testimony must be convincing of their efficacy as well as conveying the satisfactory assurance of their freedom from any medicine in the slightest degree injurious to the constitution, Medical Men being well aware of the deleterious effects of many preparations, which in Pulmonary Affections do but mask the symptoms for a time, and afford only temporary relief, while perhaps the constitutional disease is aggravated, or at least unsubdued. ”

“ Article 56 The State shall consolidate and develop the system of universal free medical service, and consolidates the section doctor system and the system of preventive medicine to protect people's life and improve working people's health. ”

“ Is there not reason for believing that the truly wise men of the medical profession, at the present time, are beginning to see, in certain facts which in the providence of God are forced upon [Pg 377] them, that in the general management of disease, and as the general rule of treatment, no drugs or medicines are needful?
There is a wide difference between that practice of our profession which, as a general rule, excludes medicine, and that which, as a general rule, includes it. ”

“ But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies, some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine. ”

“ Neither can the legislature, in whose power it is to do much more for preserving the public health than can ever be done by the Faculty, exert that power with propriety, and to the greatest advantage, without some degree of medical knowledge. ”

“ If medicine had been regulated three hundred years ago by Act of Parliament; if there had been Thirty-nine Articles of Physic, and every licensed practitioner had been compelled, under pains and penalties, to compound his drugs by the prescriptions of Henry the Eighth's physician, Doctor Butts, it is easy to conjecture in what state of health the people of this country would at present be found. Constitutions have changed with habits of life, and the treatment of disorders has changed to meet the new conditions. ”

“ PUBLIC HEALTH, LAW OF. State medicine as an organized department of administration is entirely of modern growth. By the common law of England the only remedy for any act or omission dangerous to health was an action for damages or an indictment for nuisance. ”

“ Amongst other symptoms of advancing civilisation proper to this period, was an effort towards the correction of unauthorised medical practice. ‘Persons without knowledge of the science of medicine’ were everywhere practising, ‘to the great and evident hazard of the lives and healths of many of our subjects;’ so declared the king. ”

“ If the art of keeping a community in health is but the application of plain physiological laws, it is no less true that the art of restoring the health, curative as distinct from preventive medicine, rests upon the same basis. In former days the physician was one who recognized what he called the disease of his patient, who referred to his books of precedents as a lawyer to his statutes, and who prescribed a proper remedy to cast out the disease. We now know that disease is, as the name implies, a purely subjective conception. ”

“ Combe: “The little regard,” he says, “which has hitherto been paid to the laws of the human constitution, as the true basis on which our attempts to improve the condition of man ought to rest, will be obvious from the fact, that, notwithstanding the direct uses, to which a knowledge of the conditions, which regulate the healthy action of the bodily organs, may be applied in the prevention, detection, and treatment of disease, there is scarcely a medical school in this country (Great Britain) [4] in which any special provision is made for teaching it.... ”

“ There would be no discrimination against or for any one set of therapeutic methods, against or for any one school of medicine or system of healing; the aim would be merely to secure under one administrative body efficient sanitary regulation in the interest of the people as a whole. ”

“ In the absence of any statutes, therefore, limiting the common law right to practise medicine inherent in every person, the term physician may there be applied to any one who publicly announces himself to be a practitioner of the art and undertakes to treat the sick, either for or without reward. The common law knows nothing of systems or schools of medicine. In its eyes, Eclectic, Botanic, Physio-Medical, Electrical, Thompsonian, Homœopath, Reformed, Indian Doctor, Cancer Doctor, Indianopathist, Clairvoyant Doctor and regular physician are alike. ”

“ It is the only tool with which they can protect the sick from unscrupulous or even well-meaning people who, for personal gain or with ill-founded conviction, promise cures by the citation of accidental or falsified results. By custom, ethics, and state laws the treatment of disease is the province of the licensed physician. ”

“ Another of the duties of the Department of Health was to examine every person that applied to practice medicine and surgery or to engage in any professional calling. The law required a medical examination to be made of the person, who was granted a license every year, so as to keep the professions up to a high standard. ”

“ If our thousands of medical graduates turned out every year into practice could go forth inspired with enthusiasm for health, convinced that the preservation of health was their especial work, and that all disease must be regarded as a violation of the laws of health, a violation which it was their special duty to fight against, a mighty step in the advancement of medicine would be taken. ”

“ In the name of God, were we a parcel of children, who would cry and quarrel for a hobby-horse, which, when we were once in possession of, we quarrel with and throw it away? It is said this Constitution is an experiment; but all regular-bred physicians are cautious of experiments. If the constitution be crazed a little, or somewhat feeble, is it therefore necessary to kill it in order to cure it? ”

“ I believe, sir, that the same good results in politics from comparing the merits of different Administrations, that results in medicine and surgery from the dissection of the human body—that they are fairly to be tried by the same rules. ”

“ Because the majority of our legislature, representing, I suppose, the majority of the public, believe in the "natural bone-setter," the herb doctor, the root doctor, the old woman who brews a decoction of swamp medicine, the "natural gift" of some dabbler in diseases, the magnetic healer, the faith cure, the mind cure, the Christian Science cure, the efficacy of a prescription rapped out on a table by some hysterical medium,—in anything but sound knowledge, education in scientific methods, steadied by a sense of public responsibility. ”

“ Its use as a drug will then be rightly restricted, as in the case of other drugs, to the intelligent direction of men upon whom the State imposes, at the present day, rigid restrictions as to preliminary education, supplemented by study of the technical knowledge of the profession of medicine. ”

“ The object of this Course of Lectures is to communicate such a knowledge of medicine, and its collateral sciences, as is absolutely necessary in the practice of your profession. Questions of the highest interest, in a social point of view, are constantly occurring in our various courts of justice, some affecting the rights of property, some the health and comforts of whole communities, and some the character, the liberty, or the lives of individuals, the determination of which depends almost entirely on evidence derived from the medical sciences. ”

“ Am I upholding the Council in its efforts to place therapeutics on a rational basis, not by blind faith alone, but by an honestly critical attitude toward it? Am I following the path of indolence by taking the advice of nostrum makers without any serious effort to determine whether they are true or false? In a word, am I really practicing medicine, or am I an unpaid agent and a dupe of nostrum makers? There are other revolutions than political. ”

“ Every physician given a licence to practise must take an oath that he shall faithfully fulfil all the requirements of the law, and in addition that whenever it comes to his knowledge that any apothecary has for sale drugs that are of less than normal strength, he shall report him to the court, and besides that he shall give his advice to the poor without asking for any compensation. ”

“ Index, for p. 156-184, read 320-348.
i_b INTRODUCTION. Medical Jurisprudence [1] may be defined, a science by which medicine, and its collateral branches, are made subservient to the construction, elucidation, and administration of the laws; and to the preservation of the public health. ”

“ The most prominent and most general object of the advocates of Medical Reform appears to be a uniformity of qualification, to be tested by a public examination, in all the candidates for a license to practise medicine. ”

“ The same reasons which control in imposing conditions, upon compliance with which the physician is allowed to practise in the first instance, may call for further conditions as new modes of treating disease are discovered, or a more thorough acquaintance is obtained of the remedial properties of vegetable and mineral substances, or a more accurate knowledge is acquired of the human system and of the agencies by which it is affected. ”

“ The charter invested the society, their members and licentiates, with large powers and privileges, in regulating the important public interest of the practice of medicine and surgery, enabled them to prescribe a course of studies, to examine candidates in regard to their qualifications for practice, and give letters testimonial to those who might be found duly qualified. ”

“ In the Latin countries the result of such a method would probably be bad; in the Anglo-Saxon lands with the habit of submission of the individual to the majority, the present method has been successful, and probably more successful than direct governmental rule would have been. The United States Pharmacopœia scientifically and practically ranks with any in the world, and obedience to its mandates in pharmacy and in medicine is universal. ”

“ In adverting to the conflicting views and differences of opinion, that exist and have ever existed in the practice of the healing art, it is not to call in question the value of learned, skilful and experienced physicians, but merely to show the error of attempting, in the present state of medical science, to recognize, as matter of law, any one system of practice, or of declaring that the practitioner who follows a particular system is a doctor, and that one who pursues a different method is not. ”

“ Persons not graduates in medicine who had practised medicine in this State under a certificate issued by the State board of health prior to the passage of the act are authorized to practise medicine in all its departments. ”

“ Proceeding thus,—patiently,—diligently,—candidly,—we may hope to form a system as far inferior in pretension to that which we have been examining and as far superior to it in real utility as the prescriptions of a great physician, varying with every stage of every malady and with the constitution of every patient, to the pill of the advertising quack which is to cure all human beings, in all climates, of all diseases. ”

“ The power of a state to make reasonable provisions for determining the qualifications of those engaging in the practice of medicine, of those engagin in the practice of medicine, and punishing those who attempt to engage therein in defiance of such statutory provisions, is not open to question. ”

“ What such people need, much more than the dwellers in settled communities, is to learn the views of modern medicine upon the treatment of the ever-present common ailments—the use of standard remedies, cautions against the abuse of narcotics, lessons of discrimination against harmful, useless, or expensive "patent medicines," and proper rules of conduct for diet, nursing, and general treatment. ”

“ Under the proper construction and ad­min­i­stra­tion of the law, all this will and is now mostly prevented. It must be evident that any article of medicine essentially damaged, is not fit to be given to the sick as a remedy. ”

“ Its eradication or cure, where the result of human agency is, in the great majority of instances, attributable rather to the careful observation, judgment and experience of the particular practitioner, than to the application of general or established methods available to all. The popular axiom, that ‘doctors differ,’ is as true now as it ever was, and as long as it continues to be so, it is impossible for the law to recognize any class of practitioners, or the followers of any particular system or method of treatment, as exclusively entitled to be regarded as doctors. ”

“ But as the physician through his knowledge of medicine and physiology, and by his diagnosis of the symptoms of disease, is able to pit law against law, and to restore health where he found abnormal conditions; so the statesman who understands the social order and the tendencies of economic forces 241is often able to control their action. ”

“ It accordingly resolves itself into two great divisions—into Forensic Medicine, comprehending the evidence and opinions necessary to be delivered in courts of justice; and into Medical Police, embracing ii_bthe consideration of the policy and efficiency of legal enactments for the purpose of preserving the general health, and physical welfare of the community.
Under no circumstances does medical science assume so imposing and dignified an attitude, as when regarded as a branch of legislation. ”

“ Nothing in the above act shall prevent any person, not a British subject, who shall have obtained from any foreign university a degree or diploma of doctor in medicine, and who shall have passed the regular examinations entitling him to practise medicine in his own country, from being and acting as the resident physician or medical officer of any hospital established exclusively for the relief of foreigners in sickness ”