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

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.

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$question. And here we think it distinctly the duty of the medical man to use all his influence with his patients to adopt and persevere in such systems of diet as he may have reason to think will, in their particular cases, most tend to preserve the mens sana in corpore sano^ not allowing them to suppose it is sufficient to do so during the period of sickness or convalescence, but habitually to look upon such care as a preventive of disease, and enforcing that view which Professor ]\Iarx takes, that it is a duty incumbent upon every one to take a rational care of his health, as the great means by which he may be enabled to perform effi- ciently those duties to which Providence has appointed him. Persons will often pay much attention to these views, when urged with all the weight of medical authority, who would laugh to scorn the very same opinions if proceeding from some judicious non-medical friend. Most persons desire health, and would make sacrifices to procure it; but many would submit more easily to severe remedies to remove dis- ease than to -a little habitual self-denial to preserve health, and the very simplicity of the means operates against their recognition. They cannot believe that a little indulgence in one thing one day, and in another at some other time, can do them any harm; and thus the medical man is often obliged to have recourse to strict and deflnite rules, rather than to lay down general principles. As to the particular system of diet to be recommended, that is a question which pertains to medical treatment, and on which we shall not enter further than to observe, that the diet which Dr. Cheyne so zealously advocated, namely, milk with seeds, &c., does not appear to us so suited to the human constitution, at least in this country in the great majority of cases, as a diet of easily digestible animal food, combined with vegetables. It is the part of a sound medical judgment to discriminate what is best in each case. The quack treats all alike, but the judicious practitioner$