Annual address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York : February 6, 1839 / by Laurens Hull.

  • Hull, Laurens, 1779-1865.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York : February 6, 1839 / by Laurens Hull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    mid in proportion ns the one is urgent and the other buoy ant, is sober and serious reason driven from the calculation of consequences. To suggest a remedy for this destructive plague may perhaps be easy ; but to apply it — here is the difficulty. The public for tho most part confound under one general denomination all those who profess to deal in medicine; and they are disposed to treat the whole body of physicians, as men prosecuting a vocation, merely for the sake of the profits which it yields : and so long as this belief is current, the opinions of the intelligent and educa- ted portion of them will have little influence. We must be contented to suffer under the imputation alike disgrace- ful to us, and disastrous in its consequences to them, until they shall think it important to distinguish between the ignorant pretender, without conscience or education, and the well instructed physician, whose conduct and conver- sation attest that he possesses both. It should be the busi- ness of the physician on all occasions, to shew to the public the folly of committing their dearest interests in health and disease, to the keeping of those who affect to despise all acquirement; to inculcate upon them the necessity of judging of physicians, as they do of other men, and in the same manner. The manners, morals and intelligence of a physician, are to be learned as the manners, morals and intelligence of other professional men, and it requires very little more native good sense to form an accurate judgment in the one case, than it does in the others. There is one argument which we can urge without the slightest danger of being charged with interested motives ; our profession is a liberal profession, it has for its object the relief ^f suf- fering humanity, and however some men may pervert it, it is nevertheless true that by far the largest part of its remuneration is found to be the luxury of doing good. In such a vocation there is no room for sccresy, and to hold a nostrum, or secret remedy is a disgrace to any man who calls himself a physician, for by this single practice,