April 22, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



603 



ist who knows everything which is known 

 in some small branch of medical knowledge, 

 and who is bending his best endeavors to 

 searching out those secrets of his specialty 

 which are as yet unknown. Or he sees 

 himself as the teacher who is helping others 

 to prepare themselves for the medical pro- 

 fession ; or as the army surgeon whose med- 

 ical knowledge is making possible some 

 vast engineering achievement like the 

 Panama Canal; or the surgeon on the side 

 lines who dashes out to render first aid to 

 the injured gladiator of the football arena, 

 or as the medical expert, clashing swords 

 with the cross-examining attorney in the 

 heated atmosphere of the brain-storm. Or 

 lastly he sees h im self as the old-fashioned 

 country doctor, passing his life among the 

 tranquil beauties of nature, and driving -in 

 his battered buggy from village to village 

 and from farmhouse to farmhouse, suc- 

 coring the wounded, tending the sick; 

 alleviating their pain and directing their 

 treatment, a veritable good Samaritan 

 doing his best for the good of his fellows; 

 making a sufficient livelihood for his simple 

 wants and happy in the position he has 

 made for himself, a respected councillor 

 and loved friend. 



Such are the various aspects in which 

 the physician ordinarily appears to the 

 average lay mind ; as the surgeon, the con- 

 sultant, the specialist, the expert, the offi- 

 cial, the teacher, the hygienist and the 

 general practitioner or family physician — 

 or as one combining any or all these func- 

 tions in varying degree. And such to a 

 certain extent the average physician really 

 is and the diversity of his functions is one 

 of the great attractions of the profession. 

 Ideals of such types blended together rep- 

 resent what the medical profession really 

 is, but by far the preponderating type is 

 the tjT)e of the old-fashioned country doc- 



tor, the general practitioner whether he be 

 in country or in town. 



By far the larger part of the regular 

 medical profession of to-day is the family 

 physician, who pursues medicine for the 

 love he has for it and for the love he bears 

 his feUows. And I say this confidently, 

 knowing them as I do, and speaking con- 

 cerning them and not as one of them. But 

 I believe it would be hard to make them 

 confess it of themselves, for the twentieth- 

 century physician does not wear his heart 

 upon his sleeve. He is half ashamed of 

 his altruistic tendencies and often tries to 

 hide them under a cloak of simulated 

 roughness. He labors without pay in the 

 hospitals and the slums; he forgets the 

 weariness of his body and the pleasure of 

 its indulgence in his delight in his call- 

 ing; he is charitable to the poor; con- 

 siderate of the moderately- well-to-do ; he 

 is a friend to those in affiiction and is 

 always ready to assume their burdens. 

 If his work is arduous and the rewards 

 are small, if his patients are exacting and 

 his worries are great, he is always buoyed 

 up by the consolation of the scientific in- 

 terest of his work and by the knowledge of 

 its usefulness. He is to-day a worthy ex- 

 ponent of the highest and noblest of aU the 

 professions, "the flower of our civiliza- 

 tion, ' ' as Robert Louis Stevenson has said, 

 and his duties are often of such a nature 

 as to enable him to touch the heroic. 



An incident of this latter nature, rela- 

 tively so common in medical practise as 

 scarcely to excite comment among physi- 

 cians, was related to me the other day by a 

 spectator, because of its humorous aspect. 

 The patient, a child, was dying of blood 

 poisoning and it was hoped that by the 

 transfusion of blood from a healthy Living 

 person by the new Crile method, its life 

 might be saved. Several members of our 

 pathological department offered their 



