An inaugural address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York : at the Capitol in the city of Albany, on the 8th day of February, 1826 / by James R. Manley.

  • Manley, James R., 1781-1851.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York : at the Capitol in the city of Albany, on the 8th day of February, 1826 / by James R. Manley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the mistakes of other professional men can be, and almost always are corrected by the superior intelligence of its fellow- members ; the evils of mal-practice or ill counsel in matters relating to property, for example, can at most but delay, they never can defeat the ends of justice, unless moral turpitude comes in aid of ignorance. Not so in the practice of physic : the errors of the physician, in (ew instances, admit of a com- plete reparation ; in most, they permanently affect the suffer- ing individual. The loss of all active usefulness, remediless disease, or a premature old age, whose duration is only mea- sured by its wretchedness, too often are their sad results ; and ignorance, apart from any moral baseness, can destroy both health and life, and, in their wreck, the social happiness of a whole community. There is no court for the correction of errors in the practice of physic, at least none which can af- ford relief to the unfortunate subject of an ill advised, or per- haps, under the circumstances of the case, a poisonous medi- cine : the most that may be expected (and this is far too much) is that the victim's misfortune may serve as a lesson to others equally unskilled in their profession, and teach them another truth of which it was always their sin to have been ignorant. There is scarcely any person whose experience is so limited as not to have presented evidence of the truth of the above re- mark : those who have witnessed the desolation of a wide wasting epidemic—who themselves have tasted all the bitter- ness of widowed hope—who have been called to inter in rapid succession every staff of their support, whether present or in prospect—and who, but for the anodynes which even protract- ed sorrow kindly furnishes to the distressed, would have drain- ed the cup of unmingled wretchedness, and found their only refuge in despair, and there are some such—they know the immeasurable difference between a well-instructed physician, and one who merely values his vocation for the profits which it yields. There are times when the intelligence of the best informed is taxed to the utmost limit of its ability to arrest the march of disease, or suggest a remedy which shall avail to ward off the stroke of death ; and when they do occur,