The moral treatment of disease / [James Foulis Duncan].

  • James Foulis Duncan
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The moral treatment of disease / [James Foulis Duncan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    diversified attainments, and of such different dispositions, that it will require the closest discrimination upon his part to estimate the respective shades of character presented to his notice, and to study their individual tastes and dis- positions if he would endeavour to accommodate himself to their peculiarities, and make the influence thus obtained subservient to the ulterior purposes of his profession. To be a good physician, a man must occupy the vantage ground of his patients, and convince them by his skill, liis sound sense, and his general information, of his right to enjoy that unlimited confidence in their esteem that his peculiar position so imperatively requires. Intimately associated with this subject is an error that prevails commonly as to the proper attainments of Medical Men, and which both for the sake of the public and the profession ought to be carefully exposed. The error to which I allude is the opinion that the entire amount of a a Physician’s acquirements consists in a knowledge of disease upon the one hand, and of drugs upon the other, and that if he has made himself master of these elementary branches of the science, nothing further is required for the skilful prosecution of his profession. This is not a merely speculative error that can do no harm in its practical ap- plication. Quite the reverse. From placing the office of the physician in a false point of view it leads the public to form an incorrect opinion of the nature of his duties, and the recompense to which he is entitled. Most persons are in the habit of estimating the value of his services, ac- cording to the amount of work that they see him actually performing, of which the quantity of writing in his pre- scriptions is the simplest test, and hence they are satisfied to pay him his fee if they receive a quid pro quo. If he writes a fresh prescription every day, and changes the