The moral aspects of medical life / consisting of the Akesios of K.F.H. Marx ; translated from the German, with biographical notices and illustrative remarks, by James Mackness.
- Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx
- Date:
- 1846
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The moral aspects of medical life / consisting of the Akesios of K.F.H. Marx ; translated from the German, with biographical notices and illustrative remarks, by James Mackness. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
294/362 page 280
![refine, and to meliorate the heart; and its salutary in- I fluence extends beyond the sufferer to those relatives and 1 friends whose office it is to minister unto him; exciting I tenderness and commiseration, drawing closer the bonds S of affection, and rousing to exertions, virtuous in their ^ nature, profitable to man, and well-pleasing to God. A i parent soothed and supported, under the anguish of pain, f by the loving-kindness of his children, a husband nursed ] ( with unwearied assiduity by the partner of his bed, a !; child experiencing all the tenderness of paternal and S maternal love, are situations which form the groundwork of domestic virtue and domestic felicity. They leave in- delible impressions on the mind—impressions which exalt the moral character, and render us better men, better citi- zens, and better Christians.”* But there are numerous classes of patients who either have no friends, or whose friends are unable or unwilling to bestow upon them proper atten- tion ; to these, as well as to the many others who require assistance they cannot get elsewhere, hospital institutions are of immense benefit; and it is a part of medical ethics to take care that the mind as well as the body should receive in them due regard, that they should be treated with uniform kindness, sympathy, and respect; and so as to remove, as far as possible, the depressing idea that they are regarded as mere subjects for experimentation and scientific scrutiny. The practice which prevails in some foreign hospitals of lecturing on the, disease of patients in their presence, in a language which they can | understand, is deeply to be censured as most cruel and | mischievous. In all cases, whether of private or public patients, it should he the endeavour of the medical man to * Percival.—How far the present classification system in our Union Houses is calculated to elevate the standard of our people as to the domestic affections, is, we think, a point of more importance than j even economical regulations. j](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22316188_0296.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
