Old_Trapper70
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2014
- Messages
- 2,383
Someone should have told Ben Carson about the ethics of medical practice in the time of our Founding Fathers, and obviously it is not limited to Carson:
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/...e-wasnt-always-a-money-making-profession.html
"We claim to constitute, or represent a liberal profession; and the very idea or essence of a liberal profession, as distinguished from a trade, is that the acquisition of money is not its primary object. Nor is it so with physicians.
Was the introduction of inoculation for the smallpox a speculation? Was the discovery of the preventive power of vaccination (the labor of close, unremitting, and careful research during a period of several years) made, or conducted with a view to personal emolument? As a matter of course, Dr. Jenner, as soon as he had completed his discovery, published it — made it free to all mankind.
When quinine was first discovered, the mode of preparing it was immediately made known. Recently when some feeble attempts were stated to have been made to obtain a patent for the use of ether, or to conceal the process of etherization, the indignation of the profession was aroused from one end of our country to the other. The money changers were driven from the temple of Humanity.
Medicine a money-making profession! Why one-third or more of the whole practice of medical men in the city of New York is done without remuneration. The hospitals, the almshouses, the dispensaries, the medical and surgical cliniques, the eye infirmary, the orphan and lying-in asylums, the colored home, the institutions for the blind; in fine, all institutions of a charitable kind, so far as I know, are attended gratuitously; and many of them by some of the oldest and most eminent medical men. Nor are the outdoor poor neglected. When they appeal to physicians, not for advice only, but even for services which keep us from our beds, they rarely ask in vain.
I have witnessed examples of self-denial, of steady holding fast on integrity, by scores of medical men; who, amid the pinchings of poverty, have refused to embark in schemes which would have given them wealth, had they chosen to seek it in the walks of quackery. When will the world do justice to such self-denying philanthropy?"
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/...e-wasnt-always-a-money-making-profession.html
"We claim to constitute, or represent a liberal profession; and the very idea or essence of a liberal profession, as distinguished from a trade, is that the acquisition of money is not its primary object. Nor is it so with physicians.
Was the introduction of inoculation for the smallpox a speculation? Was the discovery of the preventive power of vaccination (the labor of close, unremitting, and careful research during a period of several years) made, or conducted with a view to personal emolument? As a matter of course, Dr. Jenner, as soon as he had completed his discovery, published it — made it free to all mankind.
When quinine was first discovered, the mode of preparing it was immediately made known. Recently when some feeble attempts were stated to have been made to obtain a patent for the use of ether, or to conceal the process of etherization, the indignation of the profession was aroused from one end of our country to the other. The money changers were driven from the temple of Humanity.
Medicine a money-making profession! Why one-third or more of the whole practice of medical men in the city of New York is done without remuneration. The hospitals, the almshouses, the dispensaries, the medical and surgical cliniques, the eye infirmary, the orphan and lying-in asylums, the colored home, the institutions for the blind; in fine, all institutions of a charitable kind, so far as I know, are attended gratuitously; and many of them by some of the oldest and most eminent medical men. Nor are the outdoor poor neglected. When they appeal to physicians, not for advice only, but even for services which keep us from our beds, they rarely ask in vain.
I have witnessed examples of self-denial, of steady holding fast on integrity, by scores of medical men; who, amid the pinchings of poverty, have refused to embark in schemes which would have given them wealth, had they chosen to seek it in the walks of quackery. When will the world do justice to such self-denying philanthropy?"