powell] technology xlix 



Medicine 



We have now to consider an industry which is designed to 

 secure welfare for mankind in preventing-, alleviating, and 

 cui'ing the diseases or other injuries to Avliich men are subject. 

 This industry is founded on the importance of securing the 

 best opinions of men especially trained in the learning which 

 pertains to sanitation and the remedies which are discovered 

 to alleviate and cure diseases; it is especially an industrA' of 

 opinions- Formerlj^ this feature of the industry was some- 

 what masked by the more or less constant habit of medical 

 men to furnish the medicines and appliances which they use, 

 and to chai'ge for the same rather than for their opinions. But 

 this industr}^ has been differentiated from medicine proper and 

 is relegated to the apothecary, who supplies, as merchandise, 

 the medicines and appliances, and the merchant obtains them 

 from manufacturers who produce constructions and substances. 



Here we have to note a peculiar habit of language by which 

 the industry of medicine is called a profession. It will be 

 observed that those persons who engage in the highest form 

 of esthetic art, whicla we have called the fine arts, and who 

 make a business of producing kinds of pleasure for others, are 

 called professionals. In general, a professional is one who 

 claims to be such an expert in his industry that he can com- 

 mand welfare for himself by the production of an esthetic 

 commodit}'. We might stop here to show how the lawyer or 

 the judge is also called a professional, but it will be sufficient 

 for us to notice that the term is applied in common usage to 

 denote a high degree of excellence in an industry, and that it 

 usually pertains to those persons who engage in the fifth grade 

 of arts, as we have designated them, namely, esthetics, indus- 

 tries, institutions, linguistics, and opinions. In medicine the 

 professional medical man is remunerated, not for the medicine 

 which he furnishes, but for the opinion which he gives. 



Thus, in the order of arts which depend upon the properties, 

 the fifth property of consciousness gives rise to a fifth industry 

 of welfare, which we call medidne. 



The subject of medicine is fundamentally controlled by the 



20 ETH— 03 IV 



