The touchstone of medical reform : in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart., M.P. / by Joseph Henry Green.

  • Green, Joseph Henry, 1791-1863.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The touchstone of medical reform : in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart., M.P. / by Joseph Henry Green. 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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    which voluntarily move and breathe Christian charity, we are relieved from the task of re-iterating that which is better taught, and from the necessity of showing that the character of a gentleman is included in that of the universal man, and that the former, if it ought to be distinguished at all, is distinguished only by those graces, which are the natural blossom and fragrance of Christian love. At all events, if the due performance of the func- tions assigned to the medical man, and the proper regard to his professional character, require for their ground and actuating spirit the predominant sense and influence of his moral responsibility as a rational being, the standard, which I have ventured to place before him, will not be thought too high, nor I trust, here out of place. The medical man, who aims at the performance of those duties which his profession requires, will, 1 need not say, possess himself of those requisites of knowledge which are essential to his practice, since no honest man would be without them ; but he will aspire to something more,—he wall seek to combine them with those knowledges, and that love of truth for its own sake, which tend to liberalize the profession, and in liberalizing it, to raise it from the narrow aims and interests of a trade, and to secure it from degenerating into hollow routine or dishonest quackery. As he will be above the ordinary vices, so likewise he will guard against the faults, that in- sensibly blunt all finer sense of honor, and end in the utter corruption of the moral character. In the