Queries in medical ethics / [William Fraser].

  • Fraser, William, -1888.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Queries in medical ethics / [William Fraser]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hold from the patient the full amount of his danger. The medical man must frequently have his feelings severely tried by witnessing the distress brought upon those who are deprived, or threat¬ ened to be deprived, of individuals with whom their dearest affections are bound up, or upon whom their subsistence or prospects in life de¬ pend ; and there is a danger, on these occasions, of his giving way to his feelings of sympathy to such an extent as to unnerve him for the important and responsible duties involved in his having the charge of the case. The following extracts from Mr. Pettigrew’s “Memoirs of Lettsom” will, I think, exhibit the true philosophy that should guide the practitioner on such occasions. The amiable Dr. Cuming, in writing to his friend Dr. Lettsom, saysk:—“ Have you not sometimes felt the humid clay-cold grasp of a respected friend’s hand ? Have you not seen the lack-lustre eye, the wan, perhaps the distorted features, and the con¬ vulsive pangs of an expiring husband and father,—- his bed encircled by an affectionate wife and a group of weeping infants, whose comfort in this world—nay, perhaps, whose subsistence—depended upon the life of their parent ? Here, too, you have sensibilities, and exquisibilities, but they are of a dif¬
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