Memoir of D. Hayes Agnew, M.D., Ll.D. : prepared at the request of and read before the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, January 4, 1893 / by J. William White.

  • White, J. William (James William), 1850-1916.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir of D. Hayes Agnew, M.D., Ll.D. : prepared at the request of and read before the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, January 4, 1893 / by J. William White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    to resent interference from those whose knowledge and research he knew to be superficial and limited ; and any suspicion of imposition or falsehood was sufficient to excite in him the most profound contempt. Thoroughly honest in all his convictions, making no effort to appear what he was not, and never influenced by any but the most upright and conscientious motives, he despised all hypocrisy in others, and above all in those who prostituted our profession to what he considered their own personal aggrandizement. He was not, however, quixotic in his ideas, and his native shrewdness and common sense enabled him to appreciate fully the merits of those men who, like himself, gained both profes- sional and pecuniary success, and combined properly and deservedly scientific with material progress. He never asked and rarely obtained in individual cases the fees to which his rank in the profession entitled him, although the aggregate of his earnings, on account of his enormous capacity for work, was very large. His small charges arose partly from the habit formed during his earlier days of practice, partly from a dislike for the drudgery of bookkeeping which resulted, as in the case of the late Dr. Meigs, in many visits being unrecorded and forgotten, but chiefty from his con- scientious desire that no sick or ailing person who wanted or needed his opinion should be prevented by lack of means from consulting him. During the later years of his life it became absolutely necessary to limit his practice by raising his fees somewhat, but he was always too modest and had too little of the money-making instinct to place a proper valua- tion upon his services. I am tempted again to call attention to the par- allelism between his habits in this respect and those of Sir Astley Cooper. The language employed by the biographer of the latter might be applied without the change of a wrord to Dr. Agnew : “ There wrere two or three classes of persons from whom, if he knew their occupation, he always, throughout life, made it a rule not to take a fee, even when offered to him. When this desire not to receive any remuneration for his advice arose out of a belief that the pecuniary resources of his patient were very limited, he had the most happy manner of expressing it to the patient, without wounding his pride, or otherwise offending his feelings.” Both by character and training Dr. Agnew was law-abiding and scrupulously, even rigidly, correct in all the details of his life, but on the other hand, for those who, less fortunate in temperament or educa- tion or surroundings, succumbed to temptations wdiich to him were so ineffective as to be practically non-existent, his sympathy and compas- sion were never-failing. No one was farther than he from the Puri- tanical morality which, negatively virtuous and technically Christian, finds the chief solace for its own discomforts in the contemplation of