The doctor's bill / by Hugh Cabot.

  • Cabot, Hugh, 1872-1945.
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The doctor's bill / by Hugh Cabot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION Hugh Cabot has asked me to write an introduction to this book, and although as incompetent as any non-medical man must be to discuss the questions raised therein, I am very glad to do so because I have long known him and greatly admired his character and career, his courage, and his clearness in seeing the essential points in any matter to which he turns his attention. Graduating from the Harvard Medical School in 1898, he built up a practice in his special field of genito-urinary surgery, but abandoned it in 1916 to take charge of a British surgical base hospital, which he commanded throughout the war, doing an amaz- ing amount of work for the initial equipment of his plant. Returning three years later with his private practice in Boston evaporated, he was appointed Professor of Surgery and later Dean of the Medical School at the University of Michigan, and Chief Surgeon of the new hospital being built there. Fearless as ever, he lost this position after ten years chiefly because he strove, against the opposi- tion of many in the profession there, to carry out in the hospital principles which he considered essential in a tax-supported institu- tion of such a nature. Since that time he has been a member of the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota. Now in regard to this book, which is the product of long and discriminating observation. The advance of knowledge has thrown upon the scrap heap many processes useful in their day, but nowhere else has this been so true as in medicine and surgery. Chemical, bacterial and microscopic analysis has revolutionized diagnosis; knowledge of the secretions of the ductless and other glands, and of the functions of the blood and tissues, has brought new elements into the treatment of disease; anesthetics and anti- septics have made surgery a different art. In his first chapter, on medical practice in 1890 and 1930, Dr. Cabot points out in a striking way the effect of such changes on the position of the physician. The period is substantially that of his own experience from medical school onward, and with charac- teristic fairness he portrays the loss as well as the gain in the