Our medical charities : an address delivered at the annual meeting of the Birmingham and Midland Counties Branch of the British Medical Association, June 26th, 1877 / by Sampson Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, Sampson, 1828-1886.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Our medical charities : an address delivered at the annual meeting of the Birmingham and Midland Counties Branch of the British Medical Association, June 26th, 1877 / by Sampson Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “There are two kinds of charity . . one beneficent, the other injurious; the former raises its objects, develops their resources, trains them to habits of self-help, and calls forth in them a spirit of independence ; but blind, foolish, and injurious charity, even while temporarily benefiting its recipients, permanently degrades them ... it discourages thrift and prudence ; it induces habits of carelessness, improvidence, and helplessness; and it both generates and fosters that spirit of dependence, which is the chief cause of pauperism in this country.”— Westminster Review, 1874, vol. xlv., p. 175. “ Under present circumstances the administration of charity requires, as Sir Arthur Helps has said, the sternest labour and the most anxious thought. It must not be forgotten that there is a limit to the liberality of the most liberal profession in the world ... As now constituted, the Hospital not only does the work which belongs to the Parochial Authorities, but usurps and intercepts much of that which rightly appertains to an expensively educated professional class.”— The Quarterly Review, October, 1876.