Sanitary economics: or, our medical charities, as they are, and as they ought to be / [Alexander Patrick Stewart].

  • Stewart, Alexander P. (Alexander Patrick), 1813-1883
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sanitary economics: or, our medical charities, as they are, and as they ought to be / [Alexander Patrick Stewart]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    men will not qualify voluntarily, save in those cases of self-infliction, which are too rare and too mon-' strous, to be of any significancy in a practical argu¬ ment upon the question. We cannot imagine, there¬ fore/’ he adds, “ a more glaring violation of sound principle, than when heedless altogether of this dis¬ crimination, there is a loud and incessant call for almshouses and places of refuge, and other eleemosy¬ nary institutions in behalf of mere indigence; and along with this the most shameful abandonment and neglect of our medical charities.” It was, then, on the broad principle, that the natural aversion of healthy persons to medical restraint and nauseous drugs is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, an amply sufficient guarantee against the abuse of medical charities, that Dr. Chalmers removed them out of the category of hurtful charities, and regarded them as eminently beneficial to society. I was long disposed to look upon this principle as a general law, admitting of scarcely any exceptions. Nor, though I have come to consider the exceptions as more numerous than once I thought them, have I ceased to regard it as a general law. But, on that very account, it strikes me, we should the more anxiously endeavour to calculate precisely the force of any disturbing influences. We shall do wrong to the distinguished philanthropist, on whose opinions I am now commenting, if we forget that he nowhere treats of medical charities as the complement of a legislative provision for the poor. On the contrary, he always separates, as antagonistic, the two prin-