Currents and counter-currents in medical science : With other addresses and essays / By Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  • Oliver Wendell Holmes
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Currents and counter-currents in medical science : With other addresses and essays / By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    the outside world, without polluting its sanctuary by your presence, it is, I think, needless for me to urge. Charity is the eminent virtue of the medical pro- fession. Show me the garret or the cellar which its messengers do not penetrate ; tell me of the pestilence which its heroes have not braved in their errands of mercy ; name to me the young practitioner who is not ready to be the servant of servants in the cause of humanity, or the old one whose counsel is not ready for him in his perplexities, and I will expatiate upon the claims of a virtue which I am content to leave you to learn from those who have gone before you, and whose footprints you will find in the path to every haunt of stricken humanity. But there are lesser virtues, with their correspond- ing failings, which will bear a few words of counsel. First, then, of that honorable reserve with refer- ence to the history of his patient, which should be- long to every practitioner. No high-minded or even well-bred man can ever forget it; yet men who might be supposed both high-minded and well-bred have been known habitually to violate its sacred law. As a breach of trust, it demands the sternest sentence which can be pronounced on the ofifence of a faith- less agent. As a mark of vanity and egotism, there is nothing more characteristic than to be always babbling about one's patients, and nothing brings a man an ampler return of contempt among his fellows. But as this kind of talk is often intended to prove a
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