The doctor in old New York / by F.H. Bosworth.

  • F. H. Bosworth
Date:
[1898]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The doctor in old New York / by F.H. Bosworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    flDeMcal 3fccs but rather to encourage and direct them in the right use thereof, and to inhibit and restrain the presumptious arro¬ gance of such as, through confidence of their own skill or any other sinister respects, dare boldly attempt to exercise any violence upon or towards the body of young or old, one or another, to the prejudice or hazard of the life or limb of man, woman or child.” The fees collected by the doctors of this day were probably very small, and yet, undoubt¬ edly, the laity were oftentimes subjected to extortion at the hands of quacks and ignorant pretenders, and while we have no legislative enactment recorded in the Dutch colony to counteract this, the following act, passed in the Colony of Virginia in 1645, is interesting, as bearing upon the point : u Whereas by the 9th act of Assembly, held the 21st of October, 1639, consideration being had and taken of the immoderate and excessive rates and prices enacted by prac¬ titioners in physick and chirurgery, and the complaints made to the then assembly of the bad consequence thereof, it so happening through the said intolerable exactions that the hearts of divers masters were hardened rather to suffer their servants to perish for want of fit means and applications than by seeking relief to fall into the hands of griping and avaricious men ; it be apprehended by such masters, who were more swayed by politick respects than Xian [Christian] duty or charity, that it was the more gainfull and saving way to stand to the hazard of their servants than to enter¬ tain the certain charge of physitian or chirurgeon, whose demands for the most parte exceed the purchase of the pa¬ tient ; it was therefore enacted, for the better redress of the like abuses thereafter, untill some fitter course should be ad¬ vised on, for the regulating physitians and chirurgeons within
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