On the duties of physicians, resulting from their profession / by Thomas Gisborne.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the duties of physicians, resulting from their profession / by Thomas Gisborne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    not ere long direct its course to him of its own accord**. III. [duties of the physician in ACTUAL PRACTICE.] We come now to the general duties incum- bent on the Physician in actual practice ; that is to say, the conduct to be observed by him, 1. towards his patients, their families and friends ; 2. to- wards other Physicians; and 3. towards persons who occupy inferior departments in the Medical Profession. I. Diligent and early attention, proportioned, according to his power, to the emergency of the case, and an honest exertion of his best abilities, are the primary duties which the Physician owes to his patient. The performance of them is vir- •> Of the practices mentioned in the following quotation, I trust there have been but few examples; yet the high professional authority whence it comes, does not allow us to suppose the imputation to be entirely groundless. A very fertile source of false facts has been opened for some time past. Tliis is, in some young Pliysicians, the vanity of being the authors of observations, which are often too hastily made, and sometimes perhaps were entirely dressed in the closet. We dare not at present be particular. But the next age will discern many instances of perhaps the direct falsehoods, and certainly the many mistakes in fact, produced in the present age, concerning the powers and virtues of medicines. (Cullen, Mater. Med. i. 153.)