Medicine and society.

  • Yeo, I. Burney (Isaac Burney), 1835-1914.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medicine and society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sible consequences, to speak of the risks of possible lunacy, or to tell such patients that they are unfit to associate with decent society, is cruel and dangerous. On the contrary, an encouraging tone should be adopted, the prospects of amendment both moral and physical should be dwelt upon, and a few words of cheerful exhortation added, which will prove far more helpful and curative than painting a ter- rible picture of the efifects of certain vices. ' To read the riot act, says Weir Mitchell, ' to a mob of emotions is valueless, and he who is wise will choose a more wholesome hour for his exhortations. Before and after are the preacher's hopeful occasions, not the moment when excitement is at its highest, and the self-control we seek to get help from at its lowest ebb.' ^ Finally, I would refer very briefly to certain very grave criticisms that have recently been advanced regarding the conduct of certain members of our profession in their relations to society. It has been stated in many quarters—in the public press, in the medical journals, and even by a distinguished member of the council of Iving's College ^—and it has formed the chief theme of a most violent and abusive attack on our profession made in France in the form of a romance,^ by a son of the celebrated French author, Alphonse Daudet—a work which has had a success quite out of proportion to its merits : it has been stated in these various quarters that surgical operations are now constantly performed, not for the advantage of the patient, but solely for the pecuniary benefit of the operators. This is reaUy a very serious charge, and, I deeply grieve to think, one not altogether unfounded. It is one of the evils attendant on the spread of specialism, and is undoubtedly associated with the present craze to treat everything by surgical operative measures ; the impatient spirit of the age is also to some extent responsible for this tendency. Instead of waiting to untie the knot, in order to save time we cut it! Society is itself greatly to blame for this in the encouragement it has given to the excessive development of specialism, and for not exercising ' a reasonable judgment as to those in whose hands they place, so often without a thought, the issues of life and death, and the earthly fates of their dearest.' The French book to which I have referred brings not only this but also very many other grave charges against the modern representatives of the medical profession in Paris, It accuses them of inordinate greed and extortion, of the grossest immorality, of the brutal dis- closure of professional secrets, of sharing profits with chemists and instrument makers, of receiving bribes from the doctors of various spas to send them patients, and, to complete the picture, accuses them of the most rancorous hatred and persecution of one another, ' Doctor and Patient, p. 7. « King's College, London. Les Mortieolcs, by Ldon Dautlet. Weir Mitchell's Doctor and Pxtient.