Medical society

“ The progress and welfare of society is more intimately bound up with the prevailing tone and influence of the medical profession than with the status of any other class of men. This exceptional influence is not only due to the great importance of dealing with the issues of life and death in health and disease, but it is still more owing to the fact that the body and the mind are [Pg 6] so inseparably blended in the human constitution, that we cannot deal with one portion of this compound nature without in more or less degree affecting the other. ”

“ It is a subject not unbecoming the highest attainments, to increase the stock of medical knowledge in that branch of our art. So important, indeed, to society, is the successful treatment of infantile diseases, that happy shall I be, if any effort of mine shall awaken attention to this hitherto neglected department of medicine. ”

“ The relatively large endowments given to medical education and research in recent years have created as it were a trust to be administered by the medical profession in the interest of human society in the broadest and highest significance of the term. This I interpret to mean that we must endeavor to make all advance in our knowledge of health and disease common property so far as this may be possible, to disseminate broadcast the benefits of research into the laws of health, so that they may enter into and form an integral part of the life of the individual and the community. ”

“ The advice of experts is indispensable in framing measures which affect such important subjects as wholesome food-supply, the healthy housing of a people, the prevention and spread of epidemic diseases, etc. Indeed, so important is the connection of a sound body with a sound mind, and so linked together are all classes of society, that common-sense and rational foresight will more and more recognise that health regulations [Pg 71] are a subject of national concern as well as of individual instruction, and the advice of the medical profession will be increasingly needed. ”

“ The doctor, after inveighing loudly against 'men totally ignorant of medical science,' who flood the country with quack nostrums backed up by 'fabricated proofs of miraculous cures,' proceeds to enumerate the diseases to which his 'Infirmary' is open, and to which his practice will be mainly confined. ”

“ This special responsibility of the medical profession to society is greatly increased by the fact that the training of a very large section of our intelligent youth during the important years of early manhood rests upon them. The moral as well as intellectual [Pg 96] influence exerted by those who guide the college, the hospital, the dispensary, and post-graduate classes, will mould the future action of one of the most influential portions of the community—those, viz., on whom the health of the nation chiefly rests. ”

“ Is it not obvious that there should be a staff of medical officers and orderlies, detached altogether from any association with the treatment of disease, who should devote themselves entirely to the problem of prevention? ”

“ 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. ”

“ For this reason, certain rules have been established by the medical profession, which experience has taught are necessary in order to preserve the health of the community when such diseases are prevalent. ”

“ A new and in many respects a nobler conception of medicine has been developed. Formerly medical practice was almost exclusively a personal service to the sick individual, and measures looking toward the general relief of disease and its prevention received scanty consideration. The idea of a wider service to the city, to the state, to the nation, to humanity rather than the personal service to the individual, is becoming dominant in medicine. ”

“ For its sins of omission, as for its sins of commission, the medical profession shares responsibility with laymen. For years leading educators, business men, hospital directors, public officials, have known that communicable diseases could be stamped out. ”

“ When man shall be brought to acknowledge (as truth must finally constrain him to acknowledge) that it is by his own hand, through his neglect of a few obvious rules, that the seeds of disease are most lavishly sown within his frame, and diffused over communities; when he shall have required of medical science to occupy itself rather with the prevention of maladies than with their cure ”

“ It is perhaps not too much to say that everybody nowadays knows as much about the treatment of disease as a large proportion of the members of the medical profession did in your time. As you may readily suppose, this is a situation which, even apart from the general improvement in health, would enable the people to get on with one physician where a score formerly found business. ”

“ In addition, the medical and scientific community, many public and private agencies, and institutions and concerned citizens have, over the years, undertaken valuable efforts to promote public awareness of FAS and related health concerns. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ But in sudden and painful attacks of acute disease, life may be suddenly and unexpectedly jeopardized, and immediate relief prove necessary. While under these circumstances the prompt application of such domestic treatment as good common-sense may dictate, guided by a knowledge of those first principles of medical learning which we shall hereafter endeavor to make plain, may result in speedy and happy relief, yet at the same time there should be no delay in summoning a competent physician to the bedside of the sufferer. ”

“ The number of diseases shall be lessened, and the most mortal of them shall be struck out of the list of human evils. To accelerate these events, it is incumbent upon the physicians of the United States to second the discoveries of their European brethren. It becomes them constantly to recollect, that we are [271] the centinels of the health and lives of our fellow-citizens, and that there is a grade of benevolence in our profession much higher than that which arises from the cure of diseases. ”

“ The present century has seen the establishment of all those great charitable institutions for the cure of diseases of the body and of the mind, which our State and our city have a right to consider as among the chief ornaments of their civilization. ”

“ This is of great importance because it is especially in this field of medical science and medical ignorance that the public, the patients among whom the social worker will work, is most in need both of new knowledge and of the uprooting of old error and superstition. Medical science knows very little of the causes of many diseases. But our patients, especially the more ignorant of them, are very glib and confident in their assertions as to what has caused the particular disease from which they just now suffer. ”

“ Rather than be branded a quack, charlatan, or crank, the physician keeps silent as to convictions which do not conform to the text-books. Many a life-saving, health-promoting discovery which ought to be taken up and incorporated into general practice from one end of the country to the other, and which should be made a part of the minimum standard of medical practice and medical agreement, must wait twenty-five or fifty years for recognition. ”

“ Not for the sake of degrading the aspect of the noble men who founded our State, do I refer to their idle beliefs and painful delusions, but to show against what influences the common sense of the medical profession had to assert itself. ”

“ Advantages to Science from the Improvement of the Mortuary Registration. § 208. Extending the view from the private and public immediate and extraordinary necessities which may be met by a staff of well qualified public officers, exercising the duties and powers proposed, to the ordinary but higher public wants, it will be found they may in that position obtain in years, or even in months, indications of the certain means of prevention of disease, for which the medical experience of ages has supplied no means of cure, and only doubtful means of alleviation. ”

“ Notwithstanding all the laws enacted to raise the standard of medicine, and thus protect the public from quackery, there yet exists a disposition among many to cling to all that savors of the miraculous, or supernatural. To insure the future advancement of the healing art, physicians must instruct mankind in Physiology, Hygiene, and Medicine. When the people understand the nature of diseases, their causes, methods of prevention and cure, they will not be easily deceived, and practitioners will be obliged to qualify themselves better for their labors. ”

“ That this is a subject of the gravest importance cannot for a moment be doubted when it is considered that, dating from our entrance into the world, 'from the cradle to the grave,' we too often require the valuable services of the accoucheur, doctor, surgeon, or physician, in consequence of departing from Nature's laws, increased state of civilization, and overtaxed condition of the mental and bodily systems, necessitating from time to time the knowledge and attendance of the medical man. ”

“ I may be sanguine in my expectations, but I cannot help indulging the gratifying, the cheering, the delightful thought, that, if we engage in this undertaking, as we are bound to do, by the obligations which our profession imposes upon us, with the zeal and alacrity of men anxious for the good of mankind, the Association must be of some use; must have a direct tendency to extend the empire of knowledge, and to increase our power over disease. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The profession, with a disinterestedness and devotion to science worthy of liberal minds, combines to make the prevention of disease its aim, even beyond its cure. It forms a noble co-operative society. ”

“ The chapter called "The Medical Mistake" is a brilliant attack on the idea that we must begin social reform by diagnosing the disease. "It is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease." ”

“ There is absolutely no trace of anything like opposition to the development of medical science or medical practice, but, on the contrary, everywhere among political and ecclesiastical authorities, we find encouragement and patronage. ”

“ A high sense of the duties and dignity of the medical profession animates every precept he enforces on the attention of those who are to deal with disease. Like all the advanced thinkers of his profession, he relies, in the art of curing, more on Nature than on drugs ”

“ The care and skill with which the sick are treated in hospitals, infirmaries, and even private houses, are far greater than they were; the improvement and extension of nursing are more than can be described; the care which the rich bestow on the poor, whom they visit in their own homes, is every day saving health and life; and, even more effectual than any of these, is the work done by the medical officers of health, and all the sanitary authorities now active and influential in every part of the kingdom. ”

“ Schools and chairs in preventive hygiene would soon give to the medical profession a point of view that would welcome every new truth, such as the alliance of religion and medicine, and estimate its full worth promptly. Truth seeking would be not only encouraged but made a condition of professional standing.
Just what attitude any particular physician takes can be learned by the teacher or parents whose children he treats. If he pooh-poohs or resents board of health regulations as to isolation of scarlet-fever patients, he is a dangerous man, no matter how noble his personal character. ”

“ In America it has been left for ignorant enthusiasts, devoid of any scientific training or breadth of culture, to press upon our attention the neglected elements of medical practice, and to lead a revolt against the medical profession, an anti-scientific revolution which numbers its adherents by millions. But in neither country has our established knowledge of the mental elements of disease been properly incorporated into medical practice, especially into the practice of dispensary physicians, and it is here that the social worker forms an essential link in the chain of effective action. ”