The relations of the medical profession to the state : Being the anniversary discourse delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York, February fifth, 1879. / By D.B. St. John Roosa, M.D., President of the Society.

  • Roosa, D. B. St. John (Daniel Bennett St. John), 1838-1908.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The relations of the medical profession to the state : Being the anniversary discourse delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York, February fifth, 1879. / By D.B. St. John Roosa, M.D., President of the Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    the Breaking up of Nuisances. II.—As Defendants in Suits for Malpractice. III.—As Educators of the Physicians of the Future. IV.—As Managers of Institutions for the Care of the Sick and Injured. V.—As Protectors of the Community from Quackery. VI.—As Sanitary Advisers to the Commonwealth. I.—It is probable that the singular contradictions of some of our medical experts have excited the wonder of laymen and a sense of shame in medical men. The laity have sometimes asked if there are really no fixed rules for the determination of the existence of metallic poisons in the human body; if there is no evidence of insanity that may be clearly shown to a jury ; if there is no standard as to what is a perfect cure of a fracture; and if it be not possible for the physicians of New York to agree as to whether the noise from an elevated railway is an injury to the nervous system. We know, and all intelligent lay- men know, that there must always be different shades of opin- ion upon the same subject, in a science so unsettled and progres- sive as our own; but nobody yet knows why it is that experts can always be found who honestly believe that no antimony ever was in a certain stomach, when it has been already discovered by supposed reliable authority, or why one man is pronounced to be raving mad by Professor A., and competent to take charge of vast estates by Professor B. Neither does any man know why Dr. X. believes that all broken limbs ought to heal with- out shortening, while a professional brother, of equal position, positively states that no legs ever unite without some lessening in length. Neither do any of us probably understand why a large number of physicians are induced to say, that Ci perverted mental and moral action, cerebral exhaustion, insomnia, hys- teria, chorea, mania, paralysis, meningitis, and decay of nutri- tion, will be largely promoted by life along an elevated rail- way, while other authorities state that medical literature, ac- cording to their belief, does not afford a single instance of any of these diseases being caused by noises such as are pro- duced by the cars on an elevated railway.