What the Physician Should Be : An Address Delivered at the Commencement of the Medical School of Harvard University, March 9, 1870 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from What the Physician Should Be: An Address Delivered at the Commencement of the Medical School of Harvard University, March 9, 1870

But the delusion Which then prevailed so exten sively was the defect of the times, not of the men. There were in your profession - even among those most unsparing and heroic in the use of Opium, 'calomel, and lancet not a few men of the highest order of nobility, mental and moral, uniting learning and skill, tenderness and intrepidity, the amenities that adorn and the virtues that glorify humanity.

Indeed, no profession in New England has been more, or more worthily, honored in its members than yours. Yet half a century ago success in it did not demand any higher qualities than success in homoeopathy its caricature does now. Medical practice then consisted mainly in the observation of symptoms, and the exhibition of the supposed specifics in quantities. Not too small. It required good perceptive powers, cool judgment, and a care ful hand, - not much more. It was for the most part a mechanical business, - of the higher sort, indeed, and differing from other similar vocations in its being expected to repair machines while in motion, yet still a handicraft that by no means de manded the superior-endowments of mind and char acter with which it was often associated; and if not in our larger towns, there were in our rural districts, and even in the suburbs of Boston, physicians of very high reputation and extensive practice who possessed none of the attributes of a scholar, a gen tleman, or a Christian.

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