Two uncommon esophageal cases / Anthony Bassler.

  • Bassler, Anthony, 1874-
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Two uncommon esophageal cases / Anthony Bassler. 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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    wider world, even as he entered college, with becoming and even greater humility? You are thus at the beginning of medical learning, not at its end; but if true medical knowledge and wis- dom come with practice—if you as medical men are to be students all through the days of your active life— how are you to comport yourselves toward your profes- sion ? MEDICINE AS A BUSINESS Here on the borders of the West, I feel some delicacy in entering on this subject; but at the same time, for the love of my profession, I recognize the necessity that I should speak frankly and urgently. For what in the East we call “the Western spirit” has entered into medi- cine. I protest against this appellation: this spirit is neither Eastern nor Western; it affects the whole conti- nent; it affects the modern world in general; it is the spirit of the age. We live in an age when a man’s status is determined by his apparent wealth. That is inevitable with progressive democratization. Worth may make the man and the want of it the fellow. The more philosophic we are, the more freely we admit with the poet that all else is “leather and prunella”; but notwith- standing and nevertheless, save in the most outstanding cases, worth carries with it no social recognition—it is imponderable. Man—and woman—demands some stand- ard of comparison, and if relative rank be largely abol- ished, there is nothing to fall back on but worldly pos- sessions, whence it is that, whereas of old the physician, and his wife, had a status dependent on his profession— whereas he ranked next to the lawyer, and as a profes- sional man took precedence of those engaged in com- merce—to-day he who has scooped his millions from the manufacture of a quack remedy is accounted the greater, and takes without shame the upper seat; and almost perforce the physician is driven to strive after more than a mere modest competence, if he is to be of standing in the community. Therefore the student entering medicine to-day is apt to have before him something not included in the hip- pocratic oath. Certain it is that an increasing propor- tion of medical men is more concerned over the means of improving its balance in the bank than over the means of improving the health of its patients, and regards social success as more to be considered than professional capacity. What is more, other influences