Plain home talk about the human system : the habits of men and women, the causes and prevention of disease, our sexual relations and social natures : embracing medical common sense applied to causes, prevention, and cure of chronic diseases, the natural relations of men and women to each other, society, love, marriage, parentage, etc., etc. / by Edward B. Foote.

  • Foote, Edward B. (Edward Bliss), 1829-1906.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Plain home talk about the human system : the habits of men and women, the causes and prevention of disease, our sexual relations and social natures : embracing medical common sense applied to causes, prevention, and cure of chronic diseases, the natural relations of men and women to each other, society, love, marriage, parentage, etc., etc. / by Edward B. Foote. 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.)

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    relating to a certain woman who had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, hut rather grew worse. Where the editors stopped in this tirade it is difficult to say; hut one of our city physicians received a stunning surprise from a red- man, when on a summer vacation in Michigan, two summers ago. Dr. G. was being rowed across the St. Clair River by two Indians, who had a stupid half-drunken companion stowed away in the bow, whom they familiarly called Doctor. Dr. G.'s curiosity was aroused, and he inquired why they called that man Doctor. The red-men rowed away lustily without replying, knowing that their guest and patron was a physician. Again he asked, and received no response. The Indians evidently did not like to tell. As they neared the shore, Dr. G. could endure the suspense no longer, and approaching within whispering distance, again repeated the ques- tion— Why do you call that fellow Doctor ? Cause, said the red- face, very vehemently, he d—n fool! Dr. G. gracefully subsided! While all the foregoing are jokes, the perpetration of them indi- cates an undercurrent of prejudice against the profession, which quite universally exists. Few entertain it toward any honorable member of the profession individually; but they regard doctors as a class, as necessary evils, and by no means equal to what is required of them by suffering humanity. One reason for this is that so many men of mediocre ability enter the profession. The rich man who has a son mentally unqualified to be a lawyer, morally unfitted to be made a minister, and who has not the capacity to make a successful busi- ness man, is very likely to be sent to a medical school. He may there acquire, parrot-like, the names of the various organs of the body, and by tolerably hard study, a passable knowledge of the dis- pensatory ; and, concealing his natural incapacity in a dust of tech- nicalities which he ostentatiously kicks up when he emerges from the college, diploma in hand, he passes among quite intelligent peoplo for an accomplished physician. Then there are many young men who work their way up through poverty, and desiring to enter some one of the professions, are quite apt to select that of medicine, without once asking themselves if they have any natural aptitude for the discharge of its duties. Thus the medical schools are annually grad- uating young doctors as numerously as the Yankee factories are turn- ing out all sorts of notions.