THE DOCTOR
“He must be a man of the strictest honour and integrity, for to him are confided the secrets of families, the honor of wives and daughters secret trusts that are committed to no other. Every doctor should feel the responsibility of these trusts, or he is unworthy of being a physician. The physician who practices his profession merely as a trade, for the amount of money that can be made by it, is unworthy of his calling. The higher and nobler motive of doing good to others, of relieving human suffering, of prolonging human life, is the only incentive that ever has or ever will make the great physician. In proportion to the weight of his responsibility should be the honour and the integrity of his character.
How easy it is for the physician to control the destiny of his Patients. On him they rest, and confide in. hits knowledge and truth. He decides for them questions of life and death. Happiness or unhappiness it is in his power to give, and why? The greater his knowledge the greater is his power. He has knowledge of how to do good, and consequently the power to do evil; and, therefore, the necessity of his being governed by the strictest honor and integrity in order to use that knowledge rightly.”
I found a framed print of this quotation at a car boot sale not long after I qualified. It hangs in my study and I glance at it most days.
Lewis Albert Sayre (1820-1900) was the first American to hold a chair of orthopaedic surgery. An expert in treating spinal disorders he invented the Sayre's jacket for curvature of the spine. His clubfoot shoe revolutionised the care of talipes. Sayre wrote books and lectured throughout Europe. As president of the American Medical Association in 1880 he convinced it to publish the "Journal of the American Medical Association" now one of the worlds leading medical journals