Professional morality in 1831, or the lawyer's defence of medical quackery : in which John St. John Long's discoveries are examined, and his claims to the confidence of the British public, are criticised / by a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and a master of surgery and arts.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Professional morality in 1831, or the lawyer's defence of medical quackery : in which John St. John Long's discoveries are examined, and his claims to the confidence of the British public, are criticised / by a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and a master of surgery and arts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    11/84 (page 9)
    proved himself practically unfit for the task, has entered an arena of controversy which to him was forbidden ground, and has stigmatized some of the most honour- able and efficient members of the faculty as persecutors of talent, as envious calumniators of successful merit, because forsooth they came openly forward to expose an arrogant quack, whose ignorance of medicine was only equalled by the impudent presumption with which lie practised it—because they did not stand heedlessly by and see Long sending his victims to the grave— because they stepped in between this empiric and his dupes, and laid their arrest upon his career of quackery— because in mercy to the public and in justice to them- selves they resisted his intrusion into a field of science which he never cultivated—it is a duty which I, as one of that profession, owe to it and to myself, to chastise such an impertinent intruder, to point out to him the pre- scribed limits of his vocation, and to teach him as much prudence as may enable him to walk hereafter with more circumspection, should he again ever venture be- yond his courts of law. Who expects a Lawyer in an inn to adjust matters of dispute which involve the very substance of a profession as different from that of law, as two departments of science can well be imagined ? It is the treatment of disease which is the point at issue between Long and the public. It is the management of an affection, which the most talented physicians have laboured to illustrate, and which the accumulated ex- perience of centuries has endeavoured to remedy. It is the opinions of a quack on the origin, the nature and the cure of consumption, which have raised the arm of justice, which have excited the fears of the people, which require exposure or defence. It is there-