The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-06-24
The Gathering Of the GaIens.

The coming together in this city o.
some hundreds of representative ply.
sicians from all parts of the country tC
meet each other in convention of the
American Medical Association suggest:
reflection respecting the functions and
the achievements of men engaged III
the practice of this art. What is it that
doctors do? What are their qualiiica-
ton for doing it? and how do they meet
/ their responsibilities? These are ques-
tons in which all of US are interested
There used to be a belief, which was
shared extensively by physicians them.
selves, that it was the business of doc
tors to cure disease. All educated ply
sicians know better now. After more
than two thousand years of recorded
practice the doctors now know that il
is unsafe to speak of - curing" anything
except aneurisms and the itch. With
those two troubles medical men deal
with something like certainty, for the
one they have an operation which
pretty certainly cures the lesion; for the
other they have a specific remedy. Be-
yOnd this doubt interyenes and the
greatest lesson that physicians have
learned is that their province is not to
cure disease, but rather to understand
pathology and to take such measures in
every case as will place the patient in
the most favorable condition for recov-
cry by natural processes. Physicians
have learned that nature intends men
to be well, not i'll and that when men
are i'll there is an interference with
nature somewhere. Their business is,
if possible, to remove the obstruction
and to prevent imprudence, so that
benehcent nature may make the sick
man well again. in the words of dis
tinguished New York physician, doctors
need to remember that nature does not
/ give men diseases "merely for the fun
of the thing"
In older times, when doctors were
/ expected to cure disease by efforts of
their own and when patients demanded
this at their hands, the whole work of
the physician was surrounded by an at
mOsphere of pretence andmystery which
savored strongly of quackery, and in
abandoning the pretence and teaching
/ the people the real nature of the physi-
clans functions, the profession has
made great advance and has prepared
the way for still greater one. Honesty
and frankness i'll the admission of ignO-
rance are of the essence of scientific in
vestigation and scientific investigation
is the business of all physicians.
Old ideas die hard, and quacks pros
per to-day merely because the old no.
! ton that it is the business of doctors to
! cure disease survives. The faith of men
in the existence of specifics is still great,
! and confident assertion counts for more
than all experience with the mass. The
quack plays upon his faith to his own
profit and to the hurt of the people,
who have not yet learned that in the
acceptance and use of quack medicines,
even if these are in themselves valuable
medicinal agents they take upon them
selves, without the necessary qualifica-
tons, the most delicate and difficult of
the physicians functions, namely that
of diagnosis. Even if it was certain
that specifics exist for all manner of
diseases no layman can be certain that
he knows which specific to take, because
no layman is competent to determine
. Tic udIuIG VI HIS OWu uldliuN.
The present and all singular gather
ings of physicians are outgrowths of a
great underlying principal which is at
once the most wholesome and the most
hopeful thing in the conduct of the pro-
fession. 1t is a fundamental rule of
medical ethics that the profit of the
physician is a secondary consideration;
that the first consideration is the well
fare of humanity. Founded upon this
principal is the rule that every physi-
clan is bound to inform all his brethren
of whatever discovery he NAV make,
giving humanity the benefit instead of
keeping his observation secret and
prOfting by the consequent superiority
of his skill. The whole profession is en-
gagged first in business of diminishing
the sum of human ills and only second
arily in seeking personal profit. 1t is
in this spirit that physicians organize
themselves into societies and assOcia-
tions and publish journals at a pecuniary
loss and meet together in convention
like that which is now sitting in this
city. They seek in this way to combine
the results of their several observations
into a great body of facts from which
safe inductions may be made.
In the view now taken ofthe functions
of the physician it is evident that the
training given to young men in medical
schools is not in itselfa sufficient uualifi-
cation for the duties of doctor. If dis
ease was a distinctly classified set of all
ments, each indicated by unmistakable
symptoms, and if a specific remedy ex-
listed for each disease, medical schools
could be trusted always to convert
young men of fair ability into
competent physicians, because in
that case it would only be
necessary to determine certainly that
the applicant for a diploma had the
requisite knowledge of symptoms and
remedies. As it is, the learning ac-
quired in the medical schools is the
smallest part of the physicians neces-
sary outfit. 1t is greatly more impor-
tant that the physician shall be trained
and skillful observer, a sound reaSOner,
a conscientious man whose moral sense
will not permit him to neglect his duty,
and man of calm, trustworthy iudg-
ment. In other words, his intellectual
and moral character is thing of far
greater consequence than his mastery
of any course of technical study.
For this, of course, it is impossible, in
the present state of things, for the med
zeal schools adequately to provide,
though a little more care upon their
part in testing the qualifications of their
applicants for diplomas might be ex-
ercised with advantage. They make
more doctors who are not fit to be doc