Silverlock's medical and surgical emergency reference book.

Date:
[1885?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Silverlock's medical and surgical emergency reference book. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/134 (page 8)
    PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE. ETC. - 9i --^ ■ » ■ I. —Medical men should always avoid making disparaging remarks of members of the profession, more especially those in the same district, and they should discountenance, as far as possible, remarks of this character by persons outside of the profession. II. —No one should solicit practice or offer gratuitous advice to the poor, by advertisement, circular, card, or placard, and no one should publish, allow, or cause to be published, cases and operations in non-medical papers. III. —Medical men, their wives, children, and servants, should be attended gratuitously; but where an honorarium is offered by one in good circumstances, it should not be refused. Curates as a rule should come under this head. IV. —Medical men should be willing to assist their professional brethren in all emergencies. They should also do all in their power for those in ill health, and be particularly careful not to take advantage of any enforced absence. V. —It would be as well if the families of medical men, as a rule, were to abstain from being on regular visiting terms with the patieats of other practitioners in the neighbourhood. VI. —A medical man when requested to see a case for another practitioner, should after the visit has been made carefully abstain from seeing the patient again, or calling to enquire how he is getting on. If subsequently requested to take sole charge he should courteously but firmly decline, VII. —When two medical men are called upon to attend a case of accident or sudden emergency, and the patient has no regular attendant, the one who arrives first should have charge of the case. VIII. —When a medical man attends a case of Midwifery for another, he is entitled to half the fee. IX. —Medical men, (out of consideration for the Public Vac- cinator,) should abstain from vaccinating gratuitously the children of the poorer classes. X. —Public Vaccinators should not canvass for cases among the private patients of a fellow practitioner, nor should they, as a rule, vaccinate in their public capacity out of the district. XI. —When a consuIfati'On takes place between two medical men, there should be nothing in the tone or manner of the consultant which should tend to lessen the patient's confidence in his regular medical attendant. No observations as to the nature of the case, its probable issue, or the treatment to be pursued, should be made, till matters have been privately dis- cussed in a separate apartment, and only those opinions or prognostications should be communicated by the consultant to the patient or his friends that have been mutually agreed-upon. XII. —^When a medical man is called in by his partner to act as consultant, he is not entitled to charge an extra fee. XIII. —A medical man should not decline to meet another merely because he is his junior, but he may without any impro- priety represent the advantage of consulting with one who has an acknowledged position in the profession. _ XIV.—A Consulting Physician should never under ordinary circumstances see a patient, except in the presence of, or by a written request of, the usual attendant. XV. —Medical men should, as far as possible, act towards qualified assistants in the same manner as to their ordinary fellow practitioners. ' XVI. —A Locum Tenens is bound by every principle of honour, to protect his friend's interest, and he should refuse all induce- ments held out by the patients to practice among them, after his tenn of oflace has expired.