On the duties of physicians, resulting from their profession / by Thomas Gisborne.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the duties of physicians, resulting from their profession / by Thomas Gisborne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    honour, says a modern traveller'^ through the former country, no class of citizens meets with less respect than the Physicians. We are there- fore not surprised to find the same author observing in another^ place that the science and practice of Medicine are at the lowest ebb in Spain.— The emoluments of the Spanish Physician are as low as the rank in which he is held. Even in the present day' the fee of the Physician is two- pence from the tradesman, ten-pence from the man of fashion, and nothing from the poor. Some of the noble families agree with, a Physician by the year, paying him annuallj'' fourscore reals, that is sixteen shillings, for his attendance on them and their families.— Of three-score Physicians^ set- Townsend's Jouriieij through Spain, 2nd edit. vol. iii. p. 282 ; where the writer proceeds to inform us, that all Ph3'sioians and Surgeons are obliged to swear, before tliey enter into their profession, that they will defend the doctrine of the Virgin Mary having been born without any taint of original sin. This obligation is the nioi-e sti-ang-.'ly absurd, because the truth of the doctrine in question is strongly contested even among tiie [Koman] Catholics themselves. c Vol. ii. p. 37. ■i Id., vol. iii. p. 282. ' Townsend's Journey through Spain, 2nd edit vol. iii. p. 340. The irrational interference of the Spanish Go- vernment in medical practice tends equally to depress the science and its professors. We learn from the writer already quoted, that in the year 1784, and again in the subsequent year, a putrid fever raging in some of the pro- vinces, the Court issued out an order to the Physicians, forbidding them to administer any medicine to the sick