Medicine and society.

  • Yeo, I. Burney (Isaac Burney), 1835-1914.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medicine and society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    inquiries about all the particulars of their malady; and a contem- porary writer testifies that he saw more than thirty patients who wished to submit to that operation, and ' whose foolishness was so great that they became angry when they were assured there was no necessity for it.' ^ Another sore point in connection with the relations between the medical profession and society is the tendency on the part of society and the public press to tolerate and encourage quackery and charlatanism of all kinds. By charlatanism I do not mean merely the practice of the imqualified and acknowledged quack, but the systematic employ- ment of falsehood, deception, and exaggeration in medical and surgical methods, whether within or without the medical profession. Society, it must be acknowledged, is full of charlatans of all kinds, and I think it will be found, on careful observation, that quacks like to consult quacks. ' Tout ce qui se ressemble s'assemble.' The social quack, the political quack, the journalistic quack, the musical and dramatic quack, the theological quack, and the quack poet—' their name is legion'—incline towards the medical quack. They all live on exaggeration and on the distortion and perversion of facts. It is amusing to observe how very seriously they take one another, and the extreme gravity and self-approval of the medical charlatan accord entirely with their own methods. Never was the maxim of La Eochefoucauld—' La gravite est un mystere du corps, invente pour cacher les defauts de I'esprit'^—truer than in its application to these people ; and as these persons have so huge a void to conceal, their gravity is beyond measure profound. These people are nothing if not dogmatic and affirmative : dogmatic affirmation is the true spirit of quackery, and is in entire opposition to the scientific spirit, which is humble, cautious, and discriminating. Pigault Lebrun has said, ' Tout ce qui est exagere est insignifiant.' This should be our comfort in contemplating such people. Afftrmaiion however is more acceptable than discnmination to society generally. It is to be regretted, but it is so ; and many successful physicians have not forgotten this in their methods of dealing with their patients. I was asking one day of a medical friend in Paris how he could account for the somewhat rapid progress in social esteem that had been made by a rather dull member of the Paris faculty. ' Mon ami,' he replied, ' il affirme !' He had no doubts, and the possession of this self-confidence is often a very important quality in obtaining the confidence of others. Provoking often as these quacks are, I think we ought to be grateful to them for one thing they do—they relieve us of some of the most troublesome and least interesting of our patients—those ' Zc? MSdechis aic temjyi de Moliire, par Dr. Maurice Reynaud, p. 152. Vol. XXXVIII—No. 226 3 X