THE 
MEDICAL PROFESSION 
AND ITS 
MORALITY. 
[Reprinted with Corrections and Additions from 
The Modern Review, April, 1881.] 
PROVIDENCE: 
SNOW & FARNHAM. 
1892. PREFACE. 
The article, of which this pamphlet is an enlarged 
reprint, was answered in the next number of the same 
Review, July, 1881, by the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter, 
and by “ Two of the Profession.” A third article, 
which it was hoped would deal out justice in the con- 
troversy, was devoted by its writer merely to throwing 
oil on the waters. 
In the present reprint, a few small errors noted by the 
former critics have been corrected. It has not been 
thought necessary to take much notice of their reckless,1 
flat denials of many notorious,'or easily proveable, facts, 
such as the general rowdyism of medical students, the 
history of the Vivisection Act of 1876, the prevalence 
of medical love-making in recent novels, &c., &c. 
Eeviewing the paper after the lapse of five years, the 
author feels afresh impressed by the urgent need of 
public attention to the charges made therein;—charges, 
it may be aclded, of which the heaviest are now corro- 
borated by extracts from recent Addresses and articles 
by the leaders, and in the accredited organs of the 
Profession itself. 
November, 1886. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
AND ITS MORALITY. 
profession amongst all those exercised in this 
country has importantly shifted its position during 
the past century. The Army, the Navy, the Church, and the 
Bar stand much where they stood in the days of the Tudors; 
but Edward IY.’s “ Corporation of Barber-Surgeons ” has 
made a wonderful ascent from its pristine status, passing 
up from Henry YIII.’s “ Incorporated Society of Surgeons ” 
to the “ College of Surgeons,” as it exists, in the reign of 
Victoria.* A parallel elevation has taken place at the same 
time in the other branch of the medical profession which 
previously occupied (so far as its rank and file were concerned) 
a very humble position, even while a few eminent men in 
each generation rose to wealth and honour. At last the 
ignoble squabbles of the surgeons with the physicians, and 
of both with the apothecaries, are hushed, and the united 
professors of the Healing Art have lifted themselves as a 
body altogether to a higher plane than they ever before 
occupied. By dint of cohesion and generalship they form 
a compact phalanx, and have obviously suddenly arrived 
at the consciousness of corporate power. The Medical 
Council, already far ahead of Convocation, has become a 
• The Incorporated Surgeons grew out of the Barber-Surgeons, and in its 
turn became the origin of the College of Surgeons. In 1797, Lord Thurlow, 
in opposing the Bill for the incorporation of the latter, was rude enough to 
observe that “ by a law still in force the barbers and the surgeons must each 
use a pole,” and that the pole of the surgeons must terminate in a gallipot 
and a red rag. He would be a bolder Chancellor than Thurjow who, in 
1886, would not tremble on the woolsack ere he reminded the Burgeons of 
our day of the pole and the gallipot. 8 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
little Parliament, destined soon to dictate to the larger 
Senate of the kingdom, not only concerning its own interior 
affairs, but also concerning everything which can by possi- 
bility be represented as affecting the interests of public 
health.* As medical officers in parishes and unions, factory 
and prison surgeons, public vaccinators, medical officers of 
health, and very commonly as coroners, the doctors are daily 
assuming authority which, at first, perhaps, legitimate and 
beneficial, has a prevailing tendency to become meddling and 
despotic. In the Army and Navy the surgeons, long unfairly 
deconsidered, now haughtily claim equally unreasonable 
precedence. Even the Government of the country appears 
unequal to the task of contending with the profession since 
Sir Richard Cross succumbed to the deputation which 
invaded the Home Office many hundreds strong, and reduced 
him to the humiliating concession of turning his own 
Vivisection Bill from a measure to protect animals into 
one to protect physiologists. The tone of bullying adopted 
by the medical Press when the Government presumed at its 
own discretion to appoint a Registrar-General who happened 
not to be a doctor, was apparently intended to strike terror 
into the hearts of any Ministry which should venture again 
on such a step ; and the same may be said of repeated 
efforts to insist on the penalties to be inflicted on the 
heretic victims of these modem Inquisitors, namely the 
parents who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated. 
In all newspaper correspondence, indeed, wherein medical 
men express their views, a new tone of dominance, not to say 
arrogance, is perceptible; nor do many lay writers on the 
press, or speakers in public meetings, venture to allude to the 
profession without a sort of rhetorical genuflexion, such as 
a Roman Catholic pays en passant in referring to the Pope 
* A critic of this paper (Modern Review, July, 1881) scoffs at this remark, 
and ranks the Council “ the biggest sham in England—nothing but the 
embodiment of a wind-bag.” AND ITS MORALITY. 
9 
or the saints. At the meeting of the Birmingham Branch 
of the British Medical Association on the 29th June, 1883, 
the President. Dr. Balthasar Foster, complained that “in 
the House of Lords they (the doctors) had no vote where 
the Church had its Bench of Bishops, and where the public 
service of lawyers found their final recognition.” But the 
Birmingham Branch President was modest beside the 
President of the Association, Dr. A. T. Waters, who con- 
cluded his inaugural address at Liverpool, July 31st, by 
saying (as reported next day in the Standard): “ Amongst 
the many changes which revolving years would bring, might 
they not hope that .... there would come a fuller recog- 
nition of the claims of its members to some of the higher 
honours of the State ? The presence of medical men in the 
House of Lords would strengthen the powers, of that House 
and beneficially influence legislation.” 
Literature, as usual, reflects in its waters the growth of 
the aspiring tower on its banks, and represents the heroines 
of at least half the novels of the last decade as passionately 
adoring their dodtors, to the cruel disparagement of all the 
gallant soldiers and pious clergymen, who, in the earlier 
years of the century, were understood to command, the 
affections of the romantic sex. As it will generally be 
admitted, even by those who most highly esteem Jhe 
profession, that a lady’s medical adviser is the last person 
with whom it is natui al or desirable that she should associate 
the notion of love-making, this favourite modern legend 'of 
Dr. Cupid and Miss Psyche speaks volumes for the space 
now occupied by the professors of medicine in the popular 
mind. 
This universal uprising of the practitioners of the Healing 
Art has naturally gone on pari passu with an increase among 
the laity of care for bodily health and ease. It would seem 
as if our ancestors scarcely realised how painful is sickness, 
how precious is life—so enhanced is our dread of disease, 10 
TEE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
so desperately anxious are we to postpone the nour of 
dissolution! As old Selden said, “To preach long, loud, 
and damnation is the way to be cried up. We love a man 
that damns us, and run after him to save us.” “To preach 
long, loud, and sanitation ” is the modern doctor’s version of 
this apophthegm, and we do “ cry them up,” and run after them 
to save us from “ germs,” and all other imps of the scientific 
imagination. No one can foresee to what lengths our 
poltroonery may go in this direction under the energetic 
preachments of such Boanerges as Mr. Huxley and Dr. 
Bichardson. The thunders of the divines have long sunk to 
a far-off roll of old formulas, reverberated down the ages and 
able to disturb us no more. But the claps of the sanitarians 
are fresh and strong, and we tremble as we hear them; for, 
though we believe little concerning our souls, we have a 
lively faith in. our bodies, and generally follow the example 
of the French lady whose epitaph records that she 
Pour plus de security 
Fit son paradis dans ce monde. 
In short, in every department of public and private life, the 
doctors are acquiring power and influence, and coming to 
the front.. They are new pilots who have boarded our ship 
and will shortly have a very large share of the handling of 
the helm. It is a matter of deep importance to us to know 
who and what manner of men they are and towards which 
point of the moral compass they will guide us.* 
First, who are the Doctors of Great Britain in 1886 ? 
From what class of Society are they recruited ? Why do 
* It may be suggested tha£ another reason for the increased honour paid 
to doctors by our generation is due to the fact that they have ceased to be 
•empirics, and become true men of science, and that they really are able to 
cure us better than their predecessors. Such is, of course, the common 
belief j but it would seem that the faith of each generation of patients in ics 
cto generation of doctors had been always as high as it could possibly be, 
whether those doctors were the veriest quacks or the reverse. Each one has AND ITS MODALITY. 
11 
they choose their profession ? What is their education and 
general moral status ? 
I . America and in several countries in Europe medical 
men often belong, by birth, to the “ Upper Ten.” It is 
not uncommon for French nobles in these latter days to 
be doctors, and we have lately heard of a German Prince 
adopting the profession. In as it now is to a 
disastrous extent by “ Professors ” of all kinds—the doctors 
naturally take large share in the Government. In England, 
on the other hand (as is generally known, and as the 
Medical Directory proves), it has not been customary for 
men of the higher ranks to send their sons to King’s 
College or Guy’s instead of to Eton or Christchurch. The 
Hon. Dr. Herbert, Lord Carnarvon’s brother, is mentioned 
so frequently in this relation that it would seem he must 
stand almost alone of men of his grade in the medical pro- 
fession, while the Army and Navy and Clerical Lists swarm 
with the noblest names in the land. As a rule, it appears 
that the majority of British doctors are either the sons of 
men of the secondary professional classes or of tradesmen, 
and in some cases (especially in Scotland) of intelligent 
artizans. In Wales cases are not infrequent of doctors who 
themselves exercised humble trades, or were even domestic 
servants. 
Much credit is due to medical men for the honourable ambi- 
seen new remedies puffed by the faculty, unci' old remedies failing into dis- 
credit; and we may say in our day as safely as Voltaire did in his time, 
that a doctor is a man who pours drugs of which he knows little into 
stomachs of which he knows less. If science, with all its boasting, and after 
its hecatombs of bloody sacrifices, had really made important advances in 
therapeutics, we should at least be able to point to some ono or two 
unquestionable specific remedies for the most terrible scourges of mor- 
tality, such as cholera, or consumption, or cancer. Nothing of the kind, 
however, has been heard of; and it is even assorted, on respectable authority 
and with reference to registrar-generals’ reports, that the mortality from 
the principal organic diseases is actually at a rate far greater in England 
to-day than it was thirty years ago. On this matter we do not pronounce an 
opinion. TEE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
tion wherewith they have stepped upward ; but it is well to 
bear in mind that they generally enter society (whenever they 
attain its higher levels) by right only of their personal and 
professional merits; and that they do not necessarily bring 
with them quite the same set of ideas on all subjects as are 
current among the young men educated in the great public 
schools or older universities. In no invidious sense, but as 
a simple matter of fact, they should be understood to be a 
parvenu profession, with the merits and the defects of the 
class. Thus they are more apt to hang together, and make 
common cause against outsiders, than even the lawyers. 
That there are hundreds of medical men in the truest sense 
“ gentlemen,” judged either by the most conventional or 
the loftiest standard, we all know from experience. But 
entry into the profession of medicine cannot be said (as 
.Rochefoucauld remarked long ago happened in the case of 
the profession of arms) to make a man lose his vulgarity or 
his coarseness, if he be originally coarse or vulgar-minded. * 
The motives which lead men to become physicians or 
surgeons are not far to seek. The average income of the 
British doctor is said to be i‘so a year higher than that of 
the British parson, and less dependent on the chance of 
patronage. The pecuniary prizes within reach of a successful 
surgeon or physician are enormous ; and, though no peerage 
* The lady who sits at dinner beside a new acquaintance—be he squire or 
parson, hamster or soldier—rightly accepts any serious assurance he may 
give her of facts under his own cognizance, knowing very well that the word 
of an English gentleman is, as a rule, to be trusted, and that he has pretty 
well learned at Harrow and Eton, Christchurch or Trinity, to regard a lie as 
the forfeiture of his caste. But when the stranger happens to be an eminent 
Physician or Surgeon, it must be questioned whether she may equally take it 
for granted that he will not tell libs about many subjects {eg, vivisection or 
vaccination) on which they may discourse. The speaker’s manners may be quite 
as polished as those of the peer or the guardsman, but he was neither born to 
similar traditions nor educated in the same atmosphere j and it is to make a 
silly mistake to forget the fact. He may be a more truthful,—a more con- 
scientiously truthful—man than any of the others, but, if so, it is by personal 
merit alone. There is no d ■priori presumption that truthfulness is ingrained 
in Lis habits. AND ITS MORALITY. 
13 
has yet been given to a doctor, the “ Bloody Hand ” of a 
Baronet holds out considerable attraction. Finally, beside 
such mercenary reasons, there are two motives of a higher 
sort, which undoubtedly exercise great influence on the choice 
of able and good men. The first is the Scientific interest 
of medical work. In this the profession stands almost 
alone, so as to become the natural vocation of a youth with 
scientific tastes. The second is the motive of pine Humanity, 
the simple desire to relieve the woes of suffering men and 
agonising women ; to diminish the pain of the world, and to 
prolong useful lives. This is a noble, a divine motive for 
the devotion of a life; and it would be wrong to doubt that 
many a poor country practitioner, and many a skilful 
London physician, has been guided by this exalted feeling 
in his choice, just as truly as his brother has been led by 
genuine piety to enter the ministry of religion. 
The fact, however, that there are many good men urged 
by none but the loftiest and purest motives, amid the 
thousands of whom the profession is composed, ought 
certainly not to make us leap to the conclusion that all 
doctors are pure enthusiasts of humanity. As an able 
writer in the Spectator well observed, it is as absurd to 
predicate the same moral character for all men who enter 
the medical profession as for all men who pass over West- 
minster Bridge. There are, as we have just seen, sufficient 
low motives, as well as high ones, to lead young men to such 
choice. It is the misfortune of the Clerical profession, that 
the performance of its ordinary duties requires an assump- 
tion of pious feeling which even sincerely religious men do 
not always hold ready at command. The consequence is 
(as Hume long ago explained) that genuinely good clergymen 
are often led into some sort of hollowness and affectation, 
while men who have entered the priesthood from merely 
secular motives are apt to degenerate into downright hypo- 
crites. in an analogous way, it is the misfortune of the 14 
THE MEDICAL PBOFESSION 
Medical profession that the performance of its ordinary 
duties involves the appearance of humane feelings, which 
may or may not be present on any particular occasion, hut 
which the patient and his friends usually expect to see 
exhibited, and which the doctor is consequently almost 
driven to simulate. Where the medical man is naturally 
kind-hearted, there is no incongruity between his beneficent 
act and benevolent sentiment, and no shade of hypocrisy 
tarnishes his behaviour. But when the doctor has adopted 
his profession as a mere gagne-pain, or for science 
rather than love of humanity, then a certain affectation of 
sympathy with his patients and their afflicted friends is forced 
upon him, and we behold the not very rare phenomenon of 
a medical Tartuffe. 
This matter is the more needful to be analysed, because 
the idle ideas current about the “ kindness ” of doctors 
make it seem, to not a few good souls, almost a sacrilege 
to question any of the abuses of the profession. These 
simple hearts totally forget that a patient is to a doctor 
what a rock is to a geologist, or a flower to a botanist—the 
much-coveted subject of his studies. If patients do not 
come to a doctor, the doctor must go in search of patients; 
and if he could not see them in the hospitals for nothing, 
he would pay to be admitted to see them and exhibit them 
to his pupils. Very often, when the sufferer or his friends 
are with tearful gratitude thanking the doctor for having 
remitted some portion of his fees, the learned man must 
inwardly reflect that he would have paid a good round sum 
rather than have missed so curious a case. Bet any one try 
(as the writer has done) to remove to better quarters a 
pauper suffering from some “ interesting ” affliction, out of 
the reach of a doctor who was attending him for “ charity,” 
and the sentiment of pure benevolence will not be so 
manifest as might be expected. On the other hand, a 
display of sympathy is part of the stock-m-trade of a AND ITS MODALITY. 
15 
physician (especially of one who attends ladies), witnout 
which he could not hope for a large clientele, any more than 
a grocer would succeed in business who failed in civility to 
his customers. Of course, there is much real, most disin- 
terested kindness shown by medical men to their friends 
and patients. They would not be human if it were not so, 
and nobody dreams that they are insensible to the claims 
of charity or sympathy. But the everlasting “ kindness ” 
and “ guinea-amiability,” vouchsafed supremely to the 
wealthiest patients, is, as I have said, only part of the 
doctor’s stock-in-trade, like the blue and red bottles in the 
chemist’s shop. 
Against the attractions of the medical profession now 
enumerated, sufficient to account for the adoption of it by 
so many thousands of youths, it is good to set the opposite 
circumstances, which deter from it a differently constituted 
order of minds. To begin with, few men of poetic tempera- 
ment are likely, for very obvious reasons, to become doctors. 
To make the weaknesses and maladies of our poor human 
frames the subject of a whole life’s study and attention, so 
that a man should, as it were, live evermore in a world of 
disease; to pass from one sick-room to another, and from 
a distressing sight to a fetid odour, in endless succession; 
to acquire knowledge by the dissection of corpses, and 
employ it, when gained, in amputating limbs, delivering 
women in childbirth, dressing sores, and inspecting every- 
thing ugly and loathsome to the natural senses,—this is 
surely a vocation which calls for either great enthusiasm 
or great callousness. The Doctor is, in truth, at the very 
antipodes from the Poet or the Artist, It would seem to 
outsiders as if a year of his profession would suffice to blot 
from the mind all the beauty of the world, and to spoil 
the charm and sanctity of the sweetest mysteries of human 
nature. Everything which the painter, the sculptor, the 
poet touches with reverent and loving hands—the soul- 16 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
speaking eye, the heaving breast, the lip which meets lip 
in supremest emotion,—all these are to the doctor the seats 
of £0 many diseases; organs where he may look for an 
amaurosis or a cancer. Of course, we know that men of 
great refinement of feeling are found to conquer all such 
natural repugnance, and suffering humanity may he grateful 
(so far as medical science brings it relief) that there are 
those who can do so, and even find the wards of a hospital 
quite as delightful, and much more interesting, than the 
terraces of a garden or the galleries of the Vatican. To 
these aesthetic objections to the profession of medicine must 
be added another of a different but scarcely less effectual 
kind. Custom has settled that the mode of remuneration 
for the services of doctors (in the higher walks especially) 
should take the peculiarly awkward form of a direct transfer 
of coin from the hand of the private patient. This practice, 
even among well-bred persons, is liable to involve disagree- 
able incidents, and with vulgar and rude ones must cause to 
a physician of high spirit endless annoyances which are 
wholly escaped in those professions wherein service is paid 
by public salary or by fees which pass through an office. 
We have seen who are our doctors, and why they choose 
their profession. Next we may note, in passing, as regards 
their education, that they commonly change in the tran- 
sition from a medical Student to a full-blown Physician or 
Surgeon, in a manner quite unparalleled by other youngsters. 
The embryo parson, soldier, or lawyer, at Oxford or Sand- 
hurst, or while “ eating his dinners,” is, indeed, usually a 
little less sedate than he becomes a few years later ; but 
only differs from his adult self as the colt differs from the 
horse, the playful puppy from the responsible mastiff. The 
medical student, on the contrary, undergoes a transforma- 
tion like that of a larva, when it becomes a moth. One day 
we notice Bob Sawyer, as a rowdy and dissipated youth, 
with linen of questionable purity, and a pipe and foul AND ITS MORALITY. 
17 
language alternately in his mouth; the bete-noire of every 
modest girl, and the unfailing nuisance of every public 
meeting, where he may stamp and crow and misbehave 
himself. Anon, Robert Sawyer, Esq., M.D., or M.E.CJ3., 
emerges the pink of cleanliness and decorum, to flit ever- 
more softly through shaded boudoirs, murmuring soothing 
suggestions to ladies suffering from headaches, and 
recommending mild syrups to teething infants. His old 
celebrated canticle— 
Hurrah for the Cholera Morbus, 
Which brings us a guinea a-day. 
has unaccountably been changed for such burning zeal to 
save humanity from disease, that he is ready to persecute 
anti-vaccinators to the death, or cut up any number of 
living dogs and cats merely on the chane® of discovering 
some remedy for human suffering.* 
We now reach tho most important feature of the subject, 
the general Moral Character of the profession; and here 
we must all thankfully recognise that medical men, as a 
body (after their studentship), exhibit many virtuea, and 
comparatively few of the grosser vices. So far as the 
memory of the present writer extends, there have been 
no worse or more numerous scandals affecting doctors 
during the last twenty years, than affecting the clergy. 
* Tho late Dr. Carpenter (Modern, Review, July, 1881, p, 499) aaya that the 
above passage “ bespeaks either gross ignorance or malicious feeling. No 
modest girl has now anything more to fear from Medical students than from 
the undergraduates of onr Universities.” In reply to this it might be enough 
to refer to the Police Reports generally; hut it will be bettor to quote tho 
Medical Times’ opinion of the project of opening a suitable residence with 
snpervision for Medical students in London. “We would much rather see the 
London Medical student as ho is, a little wild, a little rough and guilty perhaps 
of occasional lapses from virtue, than have him surrounded by the refined 
fripperies and the polished restraint of an academic life. More billiards if 
you like; but, Proctors, distinctly No ! .... Make the student more 
virtuous and you will make the practitioner more vicious,"—Medical Times, 
November 1, 1884. (Italics ours.) 18 
THE MEDICAL PBOFESSION 
They are industrious when poor, and often liberal when 
rich. In times of war, or epidemics, their devotion to 
their chosen tasks rises, not seldom, to true heroism. 
The ordinary English country practitioner, with his small 
pay, his rough work in all weathers, and his general kindli- 
ness and honesty, is one of the most respectable and 
valuable members of the community. This and more may 
be said to the credit of the profession. On the other side 
there are grave charges and suspicions (chiefly attaching to 
the fashionable physicians and surgeons of the great cities 
and health resorts), which, though not often openly ex- 
pressed or marshalled together, are yet sown broadcast 
through the minds of the laity, and which it is highly 
desirable should be fairly stated, and then either rejected as 
unjust, or allowed their due weight in the guidance of 
conduct between the public and the profession. 
It would b‘e exceedingly unjust to include among the ele- 
ments of such a judgment as this the exceptional crimes— 
murders, adulteries, and seductions—which may he laid to the 
charge of individual offenders in every profession. The only 
point regarding these which here concerns us is the obvious 
fact that, if by any misfortune a man with criminal proclivi- 
ties enters the medical profession, he possesses, as a doctor, 
unparalleled facilities for the commission and concealment of 
crime. A Prichard or aLa Pommeray, handsome and gentle- 
manly, who may desire to remove a rich wife or mistress 
out of the way, either to inherit her money or marry another 
woman, can scarcely find any difficulty in administering a 
slow poison, or so arranging things as that the victim shall 
swallow a rapid one by mistake. Even the purchase and 
possession of deadly drugs (in other men a damning evidence 
of guilt), scarcely afford ground of suspicion against a 
doctor. Of course, we know that not one doctor in 500 
can for a moment be suspected of such crimes ; but who 
will venture to say that not one in 5,000, or one in 25,000, AND ITS MODALITY. 
19 
doctors may prove another Palmer or Webster or Prichard, 
or such a reckless wretch as he who, a few years ago, 
answered the advertisement offering £6O for a poison ? 
It is a serious question whether, in the event of the commis- 
sion of such crimes, we should find medical coroners alert 
and firm in dragging to light every suspicious circumstance 
and sending the case unhesitatingly to trial, or whether they 
would let down their colleague as easily as might be prac- 
ticable, and' direct their jury to find a verdict of “ Misad- 
venture.” The same remarks apply to crimes of another 
cast—seduction, adultery, and offences committed on nar- 
cotised victims. Doctors are as little open to such charges 
as other men, but not less so ; and again it must be borne 
in mind that they meet temptations and possess facilities for 
committing and concealing such offences which fall to no 
other lot. 
Leaving now this question of exceptional crimes, which 
ought to be excluded from our judgment of the general 
character of the profession, let us inquire, first, what are 
the principles supposed to prevail amongst medical men ? 
and then, secondly, what can we gleam concerning their 
practice ? 
It has been long generally believed that while the profes- 
sion on the Continent is almost to a man, Atheist, a milder 
and less defined Materialism is usually accepted by English 
medical men as their philosophy of the universe. Of late 
years the homage paid by the profession to certain eminent 
men of science has, rightly or wrongly, conveyed the 
impression that nine doctors out of ten, if they spoke out, 
would call themselves Agnostics. * These gentlemen may 
perhaps say that it is no business of their patients to ask 
what are their private opinions on theology and morals so 
* So far as we can learn, doctors in country parishes mostly profess Church 
principles, and. occasionally, go to Church. In London they send their wives] 
to represent them. 20 
TEE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
long as they administer to them the right drugs and set their 
bones, secundum artem. But, in truth, it is the business of 
everybody to learn what are the genuine beliefs of men who 
are certain ere long to leaven society therewithal. The 
doctors are now much more to us than drug administrators 
and bone-setters. Few prospects are more profoundly 
alarming than the advance to übiquitous influence of an order 
of men who should, as a rule, reject and despise those ultimate 
faiths of the human heart in God and Duty and Immor- 
tality, which ennoble and purify mortal life as no physio- 
logical science can ennoble, and no physical “ sanitation ” 
purify. It is a matter of importance to every individual 
amongst us to know whether the man who will stand by 
our death-bed and the death-beds of our beloved ones, will 
help us to look up beyond the gaping grave, or will throw the 
pall of his silence and disbelief over the flickering flame of 
dying hope and prayer. 
There are missionary physicians now sent forth into 
many heathen countries (notably to Japan), where they 
effect more conversions than all the clerical missionaries 
together. Who can help foreseeing that the converse will 
happen at home, if the doctors who come closest to every 
man and woman in the supreme hours of life and death 
should exhale their dead and hopeless materialism in every 
word and look ? The man who entertains a private 
conviction that the tender emotions are merely glandular 
“ affections,” and that a mother’s love, a poet’s inspna- 
tion, a saint’s prayer, are simply transformed beef and 
mutton, bread and beer—this man must, even if he be 
never so reticent, draw a trail of cold and slimy doubt over 
the fairest and noblest things in human life. There is, of 
course, a great and ever-present temptation to a physician 
to view things from the material, or (as our fathers would 
have called it) the carnal side; to think always of the 
influence of the body on the mind, rather than of the mind AND ITS MODALITY. 
21 
bn the body; to place the interests of Health in the van, 
and those of Duty .in the rear ; to study physiological rather 
than psychological phenomena; nay, to centre attention on 
the morbid phases of both bodily and mental conditions 
rather than on the normal and healthful ones of the mens 
sana in corpcre sano. All the more reason, then, is there 
anxiously to desire that the man subjected to such down- 
ward pressure should possess some faith on whose wings he 
may be lifted above the mire. Woe to him, and to all 
whom he may influence, when a doctor is at once in theory 
and practice, a Materialist and a Disease-monger.* 
Be the principles and opinions of the medical profession 
what they may, we have now to consider their practical 
conduct. The observations to be made on this matter may 
fall under five heads. 
1. The raison d'etre of the medical profession is to cure 
the diseases, relieve the pains, and, when possible, prolong 
the lives of men. To attain these beneficent ends. Science 
must be the guide—Anatomical Science, Physiological 
Science, Chemical Science, and so on. Honour is justly 
due, then, to the physician who studies science in order to 
cure Ids patients. 
But is it equally honourable to study patients in order to 
acquire science ? Is it well to treat suffering human beings, 
—as, in the medical jargon of the day,—merely so much 
“ clinical material f" Is it right to consider hospitals 
as primarily existing, not that patients may be cured, 
but that doctors may be trained ? Assuredly, whether 
it bo, or be not, morally justifiable to look on men and 
women in such a light, it is not to do so that doctors are 
* There exists a Medical Ritualistic Brotherhood, styled the Guild of 
S. Luke. Hopes wore cntorKinod at its formation that it would set itself to 
oppose the abuses of the profession ; but they have been regretfully aban- 
doned since tho publication, iu Macmillan's Magazine, of a paper by the 
secretary, defending Vivisection with the usual base appeal to numaa 
selfishness and cowardice. 22 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
paid, either by their private patients or by the public which 
supports the hospitals. The impression may be false, and 
is necessarily vague, but it is extremely strong and wide- 
spread that the primary beneficent object of the profession, 
its only ostensible object—namely, Healing—is daily more 
and more subordinated to the secondary object, namely, 
Scientific Investigation ; in short, that the means have 
become the end, and the end the means It is believed 
that patients having diseases scientifically interesting, are 
needlessly detained in hospitals, and, instead of being 
treated with a single-eyed view to restoration to health, 
are subjected to experiments calculated to elucidate patho- 
logical problems even at the cost of prolonged suffering or 
increased danger.* 
* In a letter in the Times, dated November 22, 1883, a London physician of 
high standing, Dr. Watteville, after rebuking another person for bringing a 
charge against a doctor “ of having used patients in a hospital for other 
purposes than those tending to their own direct benefit,” proceeds to say : 
“ So far from there being a reason why moral and pecuniary support should be 
refused to hospitals on the ground that their inmates are made use of otherwise 
than for treatment, there is even ground why more should bo given to them iu 
order to compensate by every possible comfort for the discomforts necessarily 
entailed by the education of succeeding generations of medical men, &c.” 
“ Sentimentalists who uphold the abstract rights of men and want to push them 
to their logical consequences have no other alternative in the question now 
before us than to condemn the modern course of medical studies.” The 
reader will likewise remember the exposure of the experiments on Hospital 
patients by Drs. Einger and Murrell in 1883. Commenting upon them, the 
Standard, November 1, said : “ It is that nitrite of sodium 
was administered to 47 patients, producing in the large majority of cases tff<j 
most distressing effects, not, apparently, to the surprise of the medical men 
who were conducting these observations. One at least of these 47 patients 
had nothing the matter with him except ! a little rheumatism.’ What the 
others were suffering from we do not know.” . . . . In a letter signed 
also in the Standard at the same time, the writer quotes Dr. Einger’s 
11 Handbook of Therapeutics,” Bth edition, p. 340, where it appears that the 
author and three other doctors cited had given twelve ounces of good brandy 
to one man in a single dose, making him “ dead drunk,” to “healthy young 
men” other huge quantities; and on “ a boy aged ten who had never in his life 
before taken alcohol in any form,” they made a “large number of observa- 
tions” of rho same kind, apparently to settle some problem about reduction of 
temperature. AND ITS MORALITY. 
23 
Similarly, in private houses, if experimentation be rare, 
the physician yet often betrays that his interest centres on 
the purely scientific aspect of the case. He gives himself 
great pains to make “ an accurate diagnosis,” to be verified, 
perhaps, hereafter, by a “ successful post-mortem ; ” but of 
the means of cure he thinks so little that he has been some- 
times observed to start, when asked by the not-unreasonahly 
Vexed patient, what he recommends him to do ? and to 
reply, “ Oh, to be sure! you ought to do something; I will 
write a prescription.” By-and-by, patients will begin to 
recalcitrate at paying heavily to afford their doctor another 
“ case ” to classify in the tables of his learned work on the 
lungs, the liver, or the brain, whereon he expects to found 
his claim to immortality and profit. They will say with 
Pliny, “ Discunt periculis nostris et per experientiam mortem 
agunt.”* 
Nor is it only for the sake of acquiring knowledge, but 
also for that of imparting it, that medical men are believed 
to sacrifice their patients’ interests. The poor sufferers who 
aacept the charity of the public hospitals do so on the con- 
dition of allowing the students, as well as the doctors, to 
inspect their cases. But it is plain as daylight that this 
condition becomes morally abrogated when the patient’s 
recovery would be postponed or imperilled by the distressing 
circumstances of exposure and bedside lecturing. Such 
limitation, however, is rarely, if ever, regarded, and decent 
women, afflicted with some of the most dreadful diseases of 
humanity, find,-in these so-called charitable institutions. 
* Dr. Barney Yeo, writing in the Medical Times, May 17, 1884, contrasted 
the Regular Physician with those Irregular people who only aim at curing 
disease. “ How different,” he remarks, “is the aim of the physician! He 
works not for the one, but for the many; not for the individual, but for 
humanity!*’ May we not reasonably ask, whether the “one,” the “ indi- 
vidual, ’ who pays the physician the fee for this large-aimed work, is quite t 
aware that his recovery is not the aim of his adviser, but rather the benefit of 
humanity on the whole by the advancement of science at his expense ? 24 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
moral tortures of outraged modesty added to their bodily 
anguish. No doctor can be dull enough to ignore the fact 
that the feelings of a woman with a crowd of curious young 
students round her bed of agony, must be almost worse than 
death, and must lessen her chances of recovery, if any such 
there he. But when does one of these teachers and guides 
of youth spare the shame-tortured woman at the cost of Mr. 
Bob Sawyer’s disappointment ? 
Again, patients are sacrificed not merely at the shrine of 
knowledge, but on the apvil of manipulative skill. That 
operations are performed for the sake either of acquiring 
such skill, or keeping the surgeon’s hand well “ in ”—as 
well as of earning enormous fees —we have the best 
evidence. The late eminent and honest surgeon, Mr. Skey, 
openly denounced this abuse, and said, “ A man who has 
the reputation of a splendid operator is ever a just object of 
suspicion.” Probably every reader will recollect cases where 
a leg or arm has been amputated, and after a time it was 
found that the frightful sacrifice might have been spared.* 
These are the men who, as Tennyson says, are 
Happier in using the knife than in trying to save the limb. 
"When we think of the cruelty—as bad as that of any tyrant 
of old—of reducing a man or women to the miserable con- 
dition of a one-armed or one-legged creature, or of rendering 
a young wife for ever excluded from the joys of motherhood, 
and of the selfishness which can make a surgeon, for the 
sake of either his skill or his fee, recommend an operation 
which might have been avoided, we have some measure of the 
hardness of heart which is at least possible in the profession, 
according to the testimony of one of its most honoured 
members. Let anyone who questions the truth of these 
A pair of the most beautiful eyes known to tbo writer were only preserved 
in the handsome head to which they belong, by the refusal of the young owner 
to profit by the urgent recommendation of one of the first oculists of the day 
to allow him to relieve her of one snlendid orb et the moderate cost, perhaps, AND ITS MODALITY 
25 
remarks examine the correspondence and leading articles 
thereon which appeared in the Liverpool Courier, for August 
and September, 1886, concerning the 111 operations on 
women performed in the Shaw Street Hospital during the 
previous year. The Lancet, speaking of the trial of one of 
the doctors concerned (prosecuted by the indignant husband 
of one of the patients), remarked, “ The interest of the trial 
lies in the question whether the frequent and almost indis- 
criminate use ” of the awful operation in question, on 
women “suffering from diseases which are not fatal and are 
often onhj trivial, is justifiable ? The highest authorities in 
this country have justly condemned the frequent performance 
of this operation”—(ovariotomy). 
And here we must recall to those who forget it, that this 
recklessness and pitilessness of doctors was betrayed forty 
years ago, when they permitted Burke and Hare to bring 
them corpses for anatomical study, which were well-nigh 
unmistakably those of foully murdered men. If this were 
possible among those to whom the “ Bnrkers ” brought 
their victims, it is idle to doubt that others may amputate 
limbs which might be saved, of detain interesting “cases” for 
years on beds of pain,—all in “ the sacred interests of science.” 
2. It is not only for the sake of science that the interests 
of patients are believed to be sacrificed by medical men. 
The pecuniary interests, either of individual doctors or of 
the profession at large, seem to outweigh such considerations 
in numberless cases.* To take a simple example. What are 
* Here is what one of the organs of the profession, with refreshing frankness 
not to say cynicism, says on this head, discussing the question of Notification 
of Diseases ;—“ Let us not pretend to more virtue for medical men than for 
other classes of practitioners of similar social standing ; and let us, therefore, 
not forget that a very numerous section of our profession will certainly not 
if they pan help it, do anything which will interfere with thoir own interests 
or practice. With such practitioners business is business. If the notification 
fee is half-a-crown, they will notify for the purpose of earning it; but if it 
pays them sixpence more to pretend not to recognise a case of infectious 
disease, they certainly will be very slow to find out what in reality is wrong 
with the patient.”—Medical Press and Circular, January 10, 1883. 26 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
the motives of those luminaries who recommend all the bad 
wines and sickly beverages which we see advertised every 
day in the newspapers ? A more certain way of promoting 
disease than the recommendation of some of this rubbish 
is scarcely conceivable. A famous American surgeon was 
offered £l,OOO to puff one of these drinks (by no means the 
worst) and act as ite usher to the New York marke*t. This 
doctor, being honest, declined the bribe. Are we to consider 
that others do not entertain similar scruples ? 
The same question may be asked respecting all the 
remedies which by turns come into fashion. We look 
back with amused disgust at what doctors have done in 
times past in the way of recommending useless and noxious 
nostrums one after another; but we forget that they are 
always at the same tricks, and' that every year sees some 
new and costly fad of medicine solemnly adopted by all the 
lights of the profession, as surely as a new cut in dresses is 
adopted by the milliners; and just as certainly next year 
quietly dropped into oblivion. 
The reckless multiplication of expensive prescriptions 
another “bone” which patients with limited means may 
well pick with their doctors. Did any one ever rally from' 
an illness, or clear a room after a death, without finding at] 
least twenty half-used bottles of draughts and embrocations- 
and gargles, and as many boxes of pills on the table ? The 
entente cor diale between the physician and the chemist, and 
perhaps certain percentages, are not unconnected with these' 
“ untasted relics of the feast.” 
A much more serious matter, however, is the question, 
How far do medical men generally really and 
strive to cure their well-paying patients? How far do they 
deceive them about their ailments, and give them advice 
which, instead of restoring them to health and vigour, is 
calculated to keep them on the sick list ? Medicine can, at 
best, not do much ; some of us think it can do very little,i AND ITS MODALITY. 
27 
and the great new sect of “ Natural Doctors ” in Germany 
are beginning to show cause for trusting nature to herself 
alone, without drugs or blisters or phlebotomy, merely 
securing for her the best conditions of quiet and air, 
warmth or coolneds, at our disposal. But assuming that 
medicines can really cure disease, how painful is the doubt 
whether the doctor whom we employ to use them for our 
benefit may turn them to our hurt 1 To be robbed by the 
policeman, or to have our premises burnt down by the 
watchman, is a small vexation compared to being kept ill 
by the man we pay to make us well. But does this disaster 
never befall us, though, perhaps, we rarely recognise the 
humiliating fact ? We have all read the mutual accusations 
of making business for themselves, which the lawyers have 
been bandying about; and we remember the good story of 
the old solicitor who received with horror from his son and 
partner (left in charge of his office during a trip abroad) the 
intelligence that the foolish young man had brought to a 
sudden conclusion a great Chancery suit which had provided 
an income for the family for ten years back, and might have 
done the same for ten years more. Similar grim jokes con- 
cern every profession and every trade. The difference in 
their application to the medical profession is, that much 
closer interests are involved, and the fraud practised is infi- 
nitely more cruel. 
Let us consider what are the presumptions against the 
doctors, since of actual evidence, from the nature of the 
case, there can be little. Let it be granted that in cases 
of febrile and acute diseases there is reason to hope 
that they do their best to effect a cure. "What of other and 
chronic diseases? What of the worst of all,—Lunacy, for® 
example? Does the mad-doctor of the private asylum, who 
makes £2OO or £3OO a year by a wealthy patient, really lay 
himself out, with all his skill, to heal the poor bewildeied 
brain ? Does he never allow the patient to excite him- 28 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
self before the visitors, so as ro bring on accesses of 
bis disorder, and confirm the belief that he still requires 
incarceration when he might be set at liberty? A clear- 
sighted author talks of “ unconscious bias produced by 
pecuniary interests ; ” and, truly, human nature being 
what it is, nobody can think it otherwise than a mis- 
fortune that the interest of a physician in cases of such 
extreme doubt and delicacy should always be on one side, 
and the recovery of the patient on the other. The Press 
has pronounced again and again that lunatics ought only 
to be confined in public asylums, where the physicians 
should receive fixed salaries, and a bonus on recoveries,—not 
payment by the case. By such judgments they have tacitly 
avowed the belief that this most grievous of the woes of 
humanity is left, by the cupidity of the doctors, to press on 
many a soul from which it might be lifted off. To quote 
the direct evidence on the subject would involve endless 
controversy. It is well known' to all interested in the 
subject. 
And what of other chronic diseases—neuralgia, and gout, 
and heart-disease, and headaches, and all the nameless woes 
of rich and feminine mortality ? We laugh at the legend of 
the physicians of the Chinese Emperor, whose salaries are 
stopped when their celestial patron is ill, and only run again 
when he is restored to health. But though we cannot copy 
this ingenious plan from the Elowery Land, we most of us 
believe that out of our twenty thousand doctors there are 
not a few (and they, by the hypothesis, among the wealthy 
and prosperous) who are far from insensible to the tempta- 
tion of keeping a well-paying patient for months and years 
in a state of valetudinarianism. When we see a peevish 
old man always in the gout, or a fine lady always stretched 
on her sofa smelling eau-de-Cologne, we may safely look 
out of window for the carriage of the unctuous doctor, 
whose yearly income would be considerably lessened by AND ITS MORALITY. 
29 
the restoration of tho gentleman to the moors, and of the 
lady to the duties of her household and nursery. If we ask 
one of these poor medical pieces de resistance why he or she 
does not at least try fresh air, or riding exercise, or Turkish 
baths, it is singular how invariably they have been told by 
dear Dr. Hushaby that any such efforts would involve 
deadly danger to their “hearts.”* 
A medical treatise, intended only for the profession, con- 
tains these significant words :—“lf cure be an object in the 
case, then ” so-and-so is to be done. Apparently there are 
cases where cure is not an object 1 Plumbers are popularly 
believed never to mend one hole in the leads of a house 
without making another. The gentlemen whom we call in 
to tinker our internal pipes and gutters, it is to be feared 
sometimes adopt similar tactics. Let us suppose a true 
specific remedy found for gout, neuralgia, or dyspepsia, 
which, by cheap and easy private application, would make 
every patient suffering from those diseases as sound as a 
trivet. What welcome would that blessed remedy receive 
from the medical Profession ? "When the news of its exist- 
ence became irrepressible, how many rich patients would be 
assured that, for their particular case, a trial of it might 
entail fatal consequences ? 
These terrible charges have not only been made by out- 
siders and satirists from Moliere downwards, but have been 
repeated with fitting grief and indignation quite recently by 
honest and honourable members of the profession itself, 
proving that they by no means concern only a past order of 
things. Here is what Dr. Bussell Beynolds, P.E.S., said in 
1881, in an address to the Medical Society of University 
* To the personal knowledge of tlio present writer, throe ladies, after 
periods varying from six to fourteen years of the sofa, wore ronsed to break 
their silken chains, and suddenly found they could get up and live like other 
people. In one case the poor dame, having renounced her doctor and all 
his ordinances, after long childlessness, became the joyful mother of a healthy 
little babe. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
College (to the Hospital of which College he is Consulting 
Physician), and which address was published at the time in 
the British Medical Journal:— 
“ There is meddling and muddling of a most disreputable 
sort, and the patients” (he is speaking of women) “grow 
sick of it and give it all up and get well; or they go from 
bad to worse.” . . . . “ Physicians have coined names for 
trifling maladies if they have not invented them and have 
set fashions of disease. They have treated or maltreated 
their patients by endless examinations, applications, and the 
like, and this sometimes for months, sometimes for years, 
and then, when by some accident the patient has been 
removed from their care, she has become quite well and 
there has been no more need for caustic,” &c., &c. 
And here is a still more horrible accusation in the same 
Address against those doctors whose specialism is the 
diseases of men. 
“ Are there not some who prey upon the sense of shame 
and extort money for needless operations and worthless 
drugs, holding in terror over their victims the knowledge of 
facts that have been confided to them? The consulting 
room—as sacred as the confessional—is degraded to the 
lowest depths of degradation when it is used or abused as 
the engine of terror or extortion. But yet bills are incurred 
and bills are drawn and Jews are sought for in order to meet 
the so-called obligations of these sufferers. The surgeon 
has the power in his hand, and he knows it, and wields it 
often with a cruelty which no words of mine can utter or 
sufficiently condemn.”—British Medical Journal, Oct. 15th, 
1881, p. 621. 
And here is what Dr. Clifford Allbut said, in delivering 
the Gulstonian Lecture for 1884, et the Royal College of 
Physicians. After referring with compassion to the suffer- 
ings of women, who, he believes, “feel pain more than men 
do,” he mentioned the “ morbid chains,” the “ menial abase- AND ITS MORALITY. 
31 
merit” into which fall “the flock of women who lie under 
the wand of the Gynaecologist ” (specialist of women’s dis- 
eases) ; “ the women who are caged up in London back 
drawing-rooms, and visited almost daily, their brave and 
active spirits broken under a false (!!) belief in the presence 
of a secret and over-mastering local malady ; and the best 
years of their lives honoured only by a distressful victory 
over pain.” (Italics ours.)—Medical Press, March 19, 1884. 
3. Beside these matters, wherein the individual doctor’s 
profits are in one scale and the patient’s in another, there 
is a still more important class of cases, wherein the interests 
of the profession axe on one side and those of the public on 
the other. In these latter there is reason to apprehend that 
a tacit trades-unionism exists among all medical men, 
whereby the interests of the laity are systematically sacri- 
ficed to those of the profession. 
As a first example of this trades-unionism, let us take the 
case of Consultations of doctors, wherein it is obvious that 
some well-understood bye-law forbids the physician called 
in consultation to allow a suspicion to go abroad that his 
colleague, originally in charge of the case, has made a blunder 
and brought the patient to death’s door. Proverbially, 
“doctors differ,” and agreement under other circumstances 
is so rare that it may be dismissed from But 
let great Dr. A., from London, be summoned to Cornwall 
or Northumberland to consult with Dr. 8., a country 
practitioner of respectable standing, about a case of im- 
minent peril, and what becomes of the proverbial “ differ 
ence ” ? Dr. A., with a solemnity which must tax his 
gravity and that of his colleague like the meeting of two 
■augurs of old, assures the heart-broken mother, or wife soon 
to be a widow, that “ everything has been done in the very 
best and wisest way possible, that the patient could not be 
in better hands than those of Dr. 8.,” and, finally (as if to 
save the appearance of utter inutility of the costly visit), that 32 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
“ the patient may now take a second tablespoonful of the 
same mixture as before.” When this solemn farce has been 
played, Dr. A., who has eaten an excellent luncbeon in the 
house of mourning, presses the hand of the miserable wife, 
pockets his magnificent fee, steps into the carriage waiting 
to carry him hack to the station, and reads on his way up to 
town a charming article on that intense sympathy of medical 
men for suffering humanity which “ makes them ready to 
sacrifice hecatombs of brutes to save the smallest pain of a 
man.” 
What has that smooth-spoken doctor done ? In the sight 
of God he has told a shameful and cruel lie, and has taken 
money from the very victim of his falsehood. He has 
betrayed the trust of loving and simple hearts, and left 
them to break, when with a word he might have done what 
in him lay to save their earthly treasure. 
If doctors will do this cruel and wicked thing for their 
trades-union, what will they not do likewise ? And who 
amongst the readers of this paper can recall any case where 
they have acted otherwise, and spoken the truth; except 
when the doctor, perhaps, whose patient they visited, 
happened to be of so humble a class, that the great man 
could venture to treat him as he pleased ? * 
Let us, for heaven’s sake, know where we stand. Will 
the doctors tell ns truth beside the sick-beds of our friends. 
* An instructive episode, throwing light on the matter, is that of Sir 
William Gull's evidence on a trial, some years ago, of a Gny’s Hospital nnrse. 
The Court asked Sir William Gull, “ In your opinion, should a skilful physician 
have known that brain disease existed ? ” Sir William replied, u There I 
must be careful. There is, no doubt, great difficulty *n recognising brain 
disease at that stage . . . but I cannot doubt that suspicion ought to have 
existed.” Later on, he refused to say, though pressed by Dr. Pavy’s counsel, 
that suspicion was very often incorrect. For this breach of medical etiquette. 
Sir William Gull, a man at the very summit of the profession, was actually 
complained against by Dr. Pavy (the physician who might hate entertained 
the “ suspicions ”) before the College of Physicians, and the President and 
Censors, having solemnly deliberated on the matter, pronounced judgment on 
the i2th January, 1881, to the following effect: That they “do not deem the AND ITS MORALITY. 
or will they not! If they will not, then let us be relieved 
from the monstrous cost and heart-breaking disappointments 
consequent on summoning them to consultations. 
This question of the secret understanding and trades-union 
bye-laws among medical men rises to the level of political 
importance when we note that our coroners ar« now so 
generally taken from the profession. The particular duty 
of a coroner and his jury in scores of cases is to deal with 
charges directly concerning doctors, and to decide whether 
they have administered wrong medicines, or connived at 
child-murder before or after birth, or neglected to attend to 
a dying pauper patient, or discharged a patient from a 
hospital who ought to have been retained, or vaccinated in 
such a manner as to entail death. It is essential we should 
know what are the rules of behaviour for a medical coroner 
under such circumstances according to medical haorality. 
What will his professional conscience require him to do as 
regards his colleague ? Is he to act simply as an honest 
coroner in the interest of the public, drag every case fully 
to light, and send such as seem to deserve it to trial ? Or 
is he to screen his medical brother by every available artifice 
and all the influence over the jury at his command, and 
never let any scandal come to light or any case go into 
court which he can by any means smother and suppress ? 
Reference to another evidence of the extent of the trade- 
character of the evidence which a member of the College has given on oath in 
a Court of Justice a proper subject to investigate when the Court has expressed 
itself satisfied in regard to the truthfulness and sincerity of the witness,” &o. 
In reviewing this decision, which, truly to the non-medical mind, appears a 
matter of course (the converse sentence being inconceivable), the British 
Medical Journal- (Jan. 29, p. 167), says—“ The evidence given upon oath in 
such oases is in the highest degree privileged . . . But it must be a very 
delicate matter for a chartered body, such as the College of Physicians, having 
certain powers entrusted by law to its Board of Censors, to deal with a com- 
plaint against evidence given upon oath by one of its fellows in a Court of 
Law.” Very “delicate” indeed! But what if the evidence were not 
“ privileged,” and only given at the bedside of a dying man, in return for a fee 
of a hundred guineas ? THE MEDICAL PBOFESSION 
unionism among medical men has been already made m 
speaking of the unanimity wherewith the profession as a 
body, having itself very little concern with Vivisection, has 
supported the handful of physiologists in their demand for 
a “ free vivisecting table.” The memorial against Lord 
Carnarvon’s Bill, presented to the Home Office, on the 
10th July, 1876, was signed by 3,000 medical men, and 
presented by such a crowd as never before invaded a Mini- 
sterial office, except, perhaps, in a revolution ; and all this 
excitement was drawn forth at a moment’s notice.* Pre- 
vious to the manipulation of their wire-pullers there were 
numerous medical men ready to denounce the abuses of 
the practice. Hixty of them at first signed the original 
Memorial to the Jermyn Street Society, and before the 
Koyal Commission, eighteen of them gave the opinion that 
the practice ought to be placed under legislative restraint. 
The Bill introduced by their ordinary Parliamentary re- 
presentative, Dr. Lyon Playfair, was entirely in the same 
spirit. But the stupid cry was raised that any restriction 
on the cutting up of live animals would be an affront to 
their profession (which had very cheerfully submitted to a 
similar restriction in cutting up dead men!), and from 
that moment there has been a closing of the ranks, from 
which only a few., Juave and self-respecting men have had 
the courage to come forth. 
The Vaccination controversy is one on which it would be 
idle here to enter; but if the reader bear in mind the fact 
that between 1840 and 1886 the doctors received £2,508,237 
out of the rates for vaccination, independently of private 
practice t (See Beports of Local Government Board), the 
* For a full account of the attitude of the Medical Profession on this 
subject, see a paper by Miss Frances Power Cobbe in the Contemporary 
Review, “ Mr. Lowe and the Vivisection Act,” reprinted by the Victoria 
Street Society. 
+ How groat the vaiuo of tliia private practice of Vaccination must bo may 
bo guessed from tlie fact that on the occasion of a panic at Eton some years AND ITS MODALITY. 
zealotry and cruelty wherewith this medical “rite” is upheld, 
will scarcely escape the suspicion of the before-named “ un- 
conscious bias produced by pecuniary interest.” Baptism 
was never urged by those who believed that it could save 
Souls from perdition, with such relentlessness as Vaccination 
is insisted upon by men whose “ cardinal doctrine,” as Mr, 
Shorter says, “is Salvation by Filth,” and who insist that 
it can save Bodies from small-pox.* 
Considering the success of Jenner’s discovery (indisputable, 
at all events, so far as affording business to doctors is con- 
cerned), it is not astonishing that Pasteur’s similar, but 
exceedingly cruel, invention should have been hailed with 
rapture by the mouthpieces of the profession. The prospect 
of Pasteur Institutes rising up on all sides, each with its 
well-paid staff of inoculators and vivisectors, has seemed 
infinitely more attractive than .the simple and inexpensive 
Buisson treatment of hydrophobia by Vapour baths; albeit, 
the latter has been known to cure the actually-developed 
disease, while Pasteur already counts more than 40 deaths 
as the upshot of his “ preventive ” measures. 
ago, a single doctor pocketed £4OO for vaccinating 800 scholars. Is it 
wonderful that we should read in the British Medical Journal (Oct. 23, 1886) 
such sentences as the following -• “ Dr. Bruce Low is of opinion that some 
system of compulsory re-vaccinatinn should ho adopted to protect the nation 
—and suggests that all children leaving school should bo ro-vacoinatod at the 
public cost ” ? 
* The trades-unionism, which commands at once the doctors who register 
deaths, the doctors who profit by compulsory vaccination, and the coroners 
who direct the juries in cases of alleged death from vaccination, I‘s amusingly 
illustrated by such facts as the following, motel bji Peter fiaylor in 
Parliament: Mr. Henry Hay, Health Officer to the Aston Union, Birmingham, 
writes s * A death from the first cause (erysipelas after vaccination) occurred 
not long ago in my practice, and although I had not vaccinated the child, yet 
in my desire to preserve vaccination from reproachi I omitted all mention of it 
in my certificate of death.’* Again, the value of a medical coroner was 
exemplified at Leeds, where an inquest was held on a child who had died of the 
results of vaccination. The coroner declined to accept that statement as a 
verdict, and told; the jury u there was no such'thing known to the law as death 
from vaccination/* and they must bring in “ died by the visitation of God.” 36 
THE MEDICAL PBOFEBSION 
Beyond the demand for unrestricted Vivisection, and for 
compulsory Vaccination, and re-vaccination, we now hear 
(1886) that the public will be taxed, if the doctors can manage 
it, to support an enormous corps of dentists who are to have 
the supervision of all the teeth of all the children in “ all the 
public schools ” of England, including the Reformatories 
and Training-Ships. Such at least is the programme of 
Mr. Fisher, read with great applause at the recent meeting 
of the British Dental Association at Dundee. Dr. Alderson 
goes further, and, as President of the West Loudon 
Chirurgical Society, advocated at its Meeting, Oct. 8, 1886, 
“the principle of ‘Health Assurance,’ t.e., the practice of 
paying medical men annually, ill or well, a certain fixed 
payment ”—“ the appointment of pathologists in every 
district, and, likewise, of School Visitors and School 
Board Examiners, from the ranks of medicine.”—Lancet, 
Oct. 30. 
All this, however, is of small account compared to another 
matter whereupon difference of opinion exists nmong medical 
men, and a few of them have honourably distinguished 
themselves by denouncing the abominable oppression. As a 
profession, however, the guilt and shame of the atrocious 
Contagious Diseases Acts he at the door of the medical men 
of England, and it is their gross materialism, their utter 
disregard for human souls when lodged in the bodies of the 
despised and wretched, which made such legislation possible, 
and supported it for long years till the conscience of the 
lay public swept it away in disgust. 
4. And now let uej turn away from this last and darkest 
charge against medical men, and ask what truth there 
may be in the boast that they are the. best friends of 
women, and that women may rightly trust them with 
grateful and unhesitating confidence ? To the fallen 
we have seen they have gone out of their way to add a 
yet deeper degradation to their miserable fate; nor may they AND ITS MODALITY. 
boast that they can set against this any effort on their part 
to extend relief or comfort of any sort to well-conducted 
women of the working classes. It has been left for a woman- 
doctor (Dr. Frances Hoggan) publicly to claim, though 
not yet, alas! to obtain, for such humble women their 
rightful share of the rates in the erection of resting-places 
for themselves and their young children as they traverse 
London. The male doctors have known all the sufferings 
and disease entailed on poor mothers by the lack of such 
temporary shelters, yet never have troubled themselves to 
say one word on the subject. Such are the doctors to 
Women of the humbler classes. What are they to ladies ? 
Undoubtedly they know their interests too well to fail to 
ingratiate themselves with them. But for real help what 
have they to show ? Did they ever make any serious effort 
to . stop the senseless and health-destroying fashion of 
women’s dress, the reckless dissipation and late hours which 
have sent thousands of thoughtless-girls to their graves? 
A few Eli-like words of mild advice was all they ever uttered 
against these deadly and wicked follies. 
The case was reversed, however, when there was a move- 
ment for the Higher Education of women, and it became 
obvious that one of the aims of that education would be 
to fit lady doctors to enter the market as competitors with 
the men who had hitherto monopolised the profits of the 
profession. Then, indeed, the doctors grew earnest and 
made a grand discovery—namely, that mental labour is 
peculiarly injurious to the weaker sex—much worse, it 
would appear, for their feeble constitutions, than any 
amount of ball-going and dissipation ; and that, in short, 
a term at Girton was wolse than five London seasons. 
Women would pensh, and the human race cease to mul- 
tiply, if female intellects ascended from gossip to Greek 
This spectre is nearly laid after ten yeajs’ exorcism, but 
women canhot forget to what order of men they owe its 'THE ME DIC A PR 0 FES SION 
humiliating introduction; and, Dr. Withers Moore has 
this year (1886) taken pains to revive their memory of the 
fact. 
But, in spite of these solemn warnings, the ladies insisted 
on reading both Greek and Latin, and eke all the learned 
treaties on anatomy and physiology and chemistry where- 
with the intellects of doctors are supposed to be as full as 
is a doll of bran. Then came the tug of war! Should 
ladies be admitted, first to medical tuition and then to 
medical degrees, and licence to practise ? The remem- 
brance is fresh in all our minds of the struggle in Edin- 
burgh and elsewhere, and the chivalrous conduct of the 
doctors and medical students on the occasion. Never, 
indeed, has there been a more absurd public manifestation 
of trades-unionism than this effort to keep ladies out of the 
lucrative profession of physicians, and crowd them into 
ill-paid one of nurses—for which (they were assured with 
the most eager iteration) they were specially and solely 
Qualified.* At last Nemesis sent a bevy of lady nurses to 
Guy’s Hospital; and the doctors will probably henceforward 
find reasons why they should no more be nurses than 
physicians. 
5. We pass lastly to the outlook for the public in future 
years supposing the ambition of the medical profession to 
proceed at its present rate of growth for another half-cen- 
tury. It is obvious that Acts of Parliament, of which the 
Compulsory Vaccination Act and the Contagious Diseases 
Acts are the preludes, will then be multiplied till it may be 
hard to name the department of human existence—birth, 
marriage, education, employment, sickness, or death—in 
which a doctor’s certificate, a doctor’s attendance, in short,* 
a doctor’s well-paid sanction, shall not have become impera- 
* For a history of the long struggle of the lady doctors and the behaviour 
cf thoir opponents, see an article in the Contemporary Review by Eight Hon. 
James Slansfold, JI.P- AND ITS MORALITY. 
tive, and the power of the profession to intrude and trammel 
and interfere and enforce its exactions rendered practically 
boundless. As a single specimen of what is already con- 
templated in this way, we need only refer to the horrible 
proposal to compel parents, children, husbands, and wives to 
submit to be separated from their beloved ones in cases 
of infectious disease, and to send them to be treated at the 
discretion of a medical man. The day when this atrocious 
scheme is legalised, either in Switzerland (where it 
made some progress through the Legislature), or here in 
England, will he “ the beginning of the end ” of all family 
happiness. Cowardice is always cruel, but the cruelty of 
tliis proposal to tear asunder the holiest ties in the hour 
when they ought to be closest drawn, is a surprising revela- 
tion of the poltroonery to which we are advancing in our 
abject terror of disease. Better would it be that pestilence 
should rage through the laud, and we should die of “ the 
visitation of God,” than that we should seek safety by 
the abandonment of our nearest and dearest in the hour of 
mortal trial, and leave them to the tender mercies of the 
men who could call on us for such a sacrifice of affection 
and duty.* 
Space forbids that we should proceed further now in 
pointing out the many lines of legislative interference 
* And while the laity are patiently listening to this vile project, the men 
who proposo it are themselves running about with the utmost carelessness 
between infected and non-infectcd patients. Are doctors, forsooth, of differ- 
ent flesh and blood from other men that infection does not cling to them 
and they cannot convey it, since no one thinks of them as the ovor-aefivo 
disseminators of zymotic diseases all over the country ? They have never 
been required (as they ought to be) to abandon one or other half of their 
practice, and confine themselves either to infections or non-infeotious cases. 
They are not even bound by any custom of their own to take the trouble to 
go home and bathe or change their specially dangerous cloth clothes before 
they pass from a am all - pox patient’s death-bed to the bedside of a woman 
giving birth to a child 1 They must be asked for no such sacrifice of profit 
or time! but they call on as to sacrifice what is infinitely more precious—our 
fondest affections and the most sacred duties which Providence has laid on 
ns between the cradle and the grave. 40 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
(which the medical profession is sure to try, and which it 
;will behove the public to watch with closest jealousy. It 
must suffice if we have here succeeded in placing before 
the reader some solid grounds for accepting the following' 
conclusions:— 
1. That the proper beneficent objects of the medical 
profession are being supplanted by the ardour of purely 
scientific investigation. 
2. That the pecuniary interests of the profession fre- 
quently override the interests of patients. 
3. That a trades-unionism exists in the profession which 
militates against the proper performance of the duties of 
medical men in various public and, private offices. 
4. That the profession has proved doubly treacherous to 
women. 
6. That the further increase of the power of the profes- 
sion holds out a serious threat to the personal liberties of all 
the lay members of the community. 
Should these conclusions seem just, it will remain for the, 
reader henceforth to watch wakefully and resist steadfastly 
the ambitious advances of this formidable order, and (as 
reforms rarely proceed from within) to bring public feeling 
to bear from the outside world to recall medical men to their 
proper beneficent and disinterested work. There is yet 
reason to hope that by such means the practice of the 
Healing Art may become really and in truth, what it ought 
unquestionably to be, but is now only in the language of 
conventional adulation—a “Noble Profession.’’ 
[To the first issue of this paper the following remarks1 
were appended by the Editor of the Modern Review 
It is not without a grave sense of responsibility that wq 
publish the above article from the pen of an esteemed con-, AND ITS MORALITY. 
41 
tributor, who prefers to withhold his signature. Our 
contributor has laid a heavy indictment against a profession 
that has ever been jealous of its honourable name. Yet our 
duty has seemed to us very plain. Without committing 
ourselves to every view or statement to be found in 
this elaborate criticism, we hold with our contributor 
that public opinion has been too timid in its attitude 
towards the great Profession of medicine, and that it 
is of vital moment that it should become both informed 
and pronounced. Hitherto a silent convention has pro- 
tected the Physician and the Surgeon from the wholesome 
play of criticism. Language which has been common with 
regard tp lawyers, and still more common with regard to 
clergymen, has been held a mark of ill-breeding if applied 
to doctors. It has been essential on the platform and in 
the magazines to allude to the latter as this noble or honour- 
able profession, while their legal and clerical compeers have 
been subject to every kind of derogatory reference. Now 
few will deny that criticism has done the clergy a world of 
good. Why should it do their medical brethren any harm ? 
All sweeping charges against a community, however care- 
fully guarded, must appear unjust. Nothing could seem 
more unfair than the assaults of Jesus on the Pharisees of 
his time. Many of them were upright and pious men. But 
the better individuals had not stood out against the worse 
or made protest against their self-seeking and hypocrisy. 
So came the condemnation which the Galilean pronounced to 
be divinely just. It is so in other cases. There are the best 
of men among the physicians and surgeons of England. But 
all are held together with tremendous force, by what some 
will call a fine esprit de corps, and others a pernicious spirit of 
trades-unionism. Hence they must be criticised as a class. 
The parallel between the physician and the priest is close. 
In spite of the temporary revival of a sacerdotal party in the 
Church of England, the people of this country, broadly speaking, have made up their minds that the influence of 
the priest in the home is inimical to morality ; and the 
pretensions of the spiritual adviser to enjoy the exclusive 
confidence'of others men’s wives and daughters can amongst 
us never be very widely revived. The power of priesthood 
is broken for ever. But in the doctors we have a class 
of men who are more and more gaining the confidence 
of the boudoir, and scrupulously honourable as multitudes 
of these men are, this growing social fact is pregnant 
with perils precisely parallel to those which are 
generally recognised among Protestants in the hold of 
priests upon the home. Nay, if there remains any truth 
in the proverb, deux medecins, un athee (and its truth 
increases rather than declines), the danger from the private 
medical director exceeds that from the spiritual. 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION, ETC. 
But peril from the assumption of the office of private 
adviser on the part of the physician demands consideration 
most of all in the case of our youths. Any one who will 
make a few casual inquiries will be amazed to discover the 
frequency with which medical men of high repute—men 
who are admitted to the friendship of good and unsuspecting 
women—offer counsel to young men and even to boys 
which strikes at the root of all morality, and, indeed, can 
proceed from nothing else than scepticism concerning the 
very possibility of morality itself.* We speak what we 
know not of one, but of many, and what no medical man 
will deny, though many a medical man will revolt from the 
action of his fellow practitioners as vehemently as we 
ourselves. What we ask of these purer spirits in the healing 
fraternity is that they will speak out on this and other 
matters of professional practice, and condemn their less 
honourable colleagues with no faltering tongue.—Ed. 
* The Bishop of Bedford, speaking on this subject at a Meeting of the 
Social Purity Alliance, May 3rd, 1882, said : “ I know what doctors say, and X 
hero publicly protest against the terrible thing that is often said by doctors to 
young men—that sin is good for their health. I say God forgive those who 
have said it ”