Professional atmosphere and morals, or, Patents and secrets vs. liberal profession.

  • Meriam, Horatio C., 1849-1911.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Professional atmosphere and morals, or, Patents and secrets vs. liberal profession. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    modern thought the nation is the making place of man. Not by the traditions of its history, nor by the splendor of its corporate achievements, nor by the abstract excellencies of its constitution, but by its fitness to make men, to beget and educate human character, to contribute to the complete humanity, the perfect man that is to be, by this alone each nation must be judged to-day. . . Showus your man, land cries to land. As of a nation, so also of a profession. Not by our degrees and titles, nor recognition by medical gentlemen or medical associations, nor by education, and a special advance in any one field, alone, but by bringing our whole profession into the atmosphere that forms and maintains liberal professions of whatever name, so that we too can show our man. For the real value [of a profession like] •' a country, must be measured in scales more delicate than the balance of trade. . . . On a map of the world you can cover Judea with your thumb, Athens with a finger-tip, and neither of them figures in the ' Price Current,' but they still lord it in the thought and action of every civilized man. No profession, however useful, can be great or held in honor that does not produce manhood. Let us be thankful that as we take our way with the Eubber Com- pany of odious memory behind, with the threatenings of the Tooth Crown Company before us, with patented instruments and opera- tions and proprietary materials and The Combination on either side, with Judas forever in our midst, that dentistry can answer when called with the name of Barnum, and I would that every dental school in the country had a tablet to his memory. The minds of us all rise at times above the question of the polish of instruments or the number of square miles covered by show- cases, to consider in what form we shall leave our profession to those who come after us. The Chinese potter, as he molds the clay prepared for him by his father, neglects not in intervals of his toil to prepare other for the son that is to follow him. Let us so mold what is to be the profes- sion of the future, by daily guarding the practice of our profession, that no future Templar landing on our shore shall find the dentist working with a collar soldered about his neck, although of beautiful workmanship and nickel-plated, bearing on it the inscription, Wamba, the son of Witless, is the thrall of Cedric of Eotherwood.