Concord!, or, Medical men and manners of the nineteenth century / by Atithasseutos.

  • Atithasseutos.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Concord!, or, Medical men and manners of the nineteenth century / by Atithasseutos. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ov some conscience-stricken barrister, who, after lie lias amassed a fortune in fees which lie never worked for, shall publish his con- fessions and repentance, and his remedy (or prophylactic rather) for the evil as affecting succeeding generations. Even a pensioned- off Chief-Justice or Lord Chancellor (if his dignity would let him) might employ his days of idleness and ease far more unprofitably to the general public, at least, who are privileged to contribute his pension—than in writing out his experiences of men and manners in the legal profession; especially with the view to the amend- ment of both, for it appears to be a widespread and still growing impression among that collective noun, the public, that some such amendment is a thing desirable—to be prayed for, and be sought. Being a medical man, my present affair is with the doctors— law or an}^ other “ faculty,” science, or art which I shall feel called upon to touch, shall be treated only incidentally, or so far as it has reference to, or ovei’laps my subject—the Reform of Medicine. To those who accept the Hebrew account of the Creation and the Fall of Man (I care not to address myself to the intelligence of those who claim their descent from mollusca, tadpoles, fishes, reptiles, and gorillas), the occurrence of the thought is easy, that human sin brought into the world as its consequence not only human death, but human affliction and human misery and in- firmity also. The doctor’s office then being to retard inevitable death, and to conquer disease, is truly highly ancient, highly noble, and highly holy. So necessary and so recognized was it through all time, that by all peoples its professors were, in the most remote ages, accounted and esteemed either as gods, or as having received their knowledge directly from the inspiration of the gods. Reli- gion and medicine had thus in relation to each other a twin, or a conjugal association. To leave out of the account the Chinese as well as the Hindoos, the Arabs, and the Egyptians, I might hunt up authorities to prove that among the early Greeks and Romans, one of the gentlest of their deities was Apollo, son of Jupiter and Latona; and he was the god of prophecy, music, poetry, and medi- cine. His son iEsculapius, by Coronis, was the god of physic also •—being this by descent—and yet,nevertheless,if possible to become more famous, he was put by his father under pupilage to Chiron, chief of the Centaurs and the son of Saturn. In course of time he did so much credit to both his ancestry and schooling that, not contenting himself with his legitimate office, the cure of almost all diseases, he raised the dead to life, and thereby raised so much commotion in the dominions of Pluto that this god being offended thereat complained to his brother, the great Jupiter, who straight- way killed his humane and ill-starred grandson by a thunderbolt. Before being placed in the sky,however, he left behind him a family of six children, the two boys of whom,namely, Machaon (MacPIone ?)