Commercialism, professionalism and their mutual relations : a series of editorial articles.

  • Millican, Kenneth William.
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Commercialism, professionalism and their mutual relations : a series of editorial articles. 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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    done in our columns, that only such medical re- forms as are likely to benefit the public have a chance of becoming law, etc. Now, we notice with disquietude and regret the spread of an increasing tendency toward a spirit of medical aggrandizement. It seems to ns as though history was repeating itself in a remarkable parallel with the aggrandizement, in the earlier middle ages, of the ecclesiastical power. The struggle between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in England, which beg'an to smoulder in the reign of Henry I and burst into flame in that of Henry II with the Constitutions of Clarendon,which were passed to check the constant encroachment of the ec- clesiastical into the jurisdiction of the civil power, was the direct and inevitable conse- quence of the aggrandizement of the clergy. When any vocation placed in an especially philanthropic relation to the public as a result of the public’s helpless dependence upon it, begins to admit among its motives for seeking special legislation “the interests of the pro- fession,” it is becoming a menace of the worst kind to the public good. Right there lies the spirit of “Commercialism.” so much berated, in the most dangerous form; no longer con- fined to sporadic cases, but epidemic and vir- rulent. In no medical legislation of any kind, should “the interests of the [members of the] profession” be a motive force. The moment we lose sight of the fact that the beneficent professions as such are the servants of human- ity, that moment we become charlatans. The public good, and that alone, is the sole justifi-
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