The medical profession, its position and its claims as a science, a business, and an art : an address / delivered by Ezra M. Hunt, M.D. as president of the Medical Society of New Jersey, at its ninety-ninth annual meeting ... January 24th, 1865.

  • Hunt, Ezra Mundy, 1830-1894.
Date:
[1865]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical profession, its position and its claims as a science, a business, and an art : an address / delivered by Ezra M. Hunt, M.D. as president of the Medical Society of New Jersey, at its ninety-ninth annual meeting ... January 24th, 1865. 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.)

    24/36
    As to miasmatic diseases, their laws are so well understood that correct views, as to preventive measures, have often led to the relief of prevailing disease, by resort to practical meth- ods of drainage, and the removal of obstructions to the flow of natural channels. Thus, by this one department of hygiene and sanitary art alone, thousands have been rescued from un- timely graves, and tens of thousands from the long-continued inflictions of disease, and yet there is no field in which more remains to be done. Strange to say, here, medicine as a sci- ence is yet far ahead of medicine as an art; in other words we know far more of the general and specific laws of health, as applicable to individuals and to crowded communities, than has as yet found its way into practice or municipal regu- lations. Not less, as a relieving art, has medicine recorded grand progress in the present century. The discovery of such an anesthetic as chloroform, or as ether, is of itself enough to crown our profession with honor for an age. Human pain and agony are sad and terrible things, and he is no small benefac- tor to his race who discovers, or whose business it is to apply principles and methods which lead to its relief. If we con- trast the past age of medicine in this respect with the present, we have reason for joyful congratulation. To perform opera- . tions without causing a struggle or a moan, which once re- quired the lashing-table and the strength of human force ; to substitute the sweet, calm smile of quiet sleep, for the scream of distress, when the scalpel is penetrating nerves ; and yet meanwhile, to accomplish the most skilful operations of sur- gery—this is a glory and a triumph of which any science or any art may well be proud. Could all the relief which has been afforded to human pain by chloroform alone be express- ed by measure of quantity, or test of quality, or power of hu- man language, you would have an aggregate of. capacity, of choice selection, of thrilling delineation such as any mere con- ception fails to impress. Could a painter in one glowing picture present you the sum of relief and of comfort that thus our pro- fession has bestowed, it would be worthy to take its place as an