28o 
Modern  Medicine. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1915. 
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Sta.  Bui.  9 :  16-18.  1891. 
4  Duggar,  B.  M. :  Lycopersicin,  the  red  pigment  of  the  tomato,  and  the  effects 
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6Wehmer,  C:   Die  Pflanzenstoffe  685-686.    191 1. 
MODERN  MEDICINE  AND  ITS  SOCIAL 
RESPONSIBILITIES.1 
By  Frederick  R.  Green,  A.M.,  M.D., 
Secretary,  Council  on  Health  and  Public  Instruction  of  the  American 
Medical  Association. 
(Concluded  from  p.  235.) 
Another  error  into  which  we  have  fallen  as  a  profession  is  the 
tendency  to  regard  the  medical  profession  as  a  divinely  authorized 
class,  whose  sacred  and  distinctive  function  is  the  protection  of  the 
people,  either  with  or  without  their  consent.  It  is  difficult  to  under- 
stand on  what  rational  basis  such  a  belief  can  rest  in  a  scientific 
profession  like  ours.  The  medical  profession  is  recruited  from  the 
same  class  as  that  which  furnishes  the  lawyers,  judges,  ministers, 
teachers  and  business  men  of  our  country.  The  men  who  go  into 
medicine  are  neither  wiser,  more  unselfish,  more  upright,  nor  more  in- 
fallible in  their  judgment  than  those  who  make  up  any  other  class 
of  professional  men.  Why  should  we  regard  ourselves  as  of  superior 
mould,  or  why  expect  our  opinions  or  views  to  be  accepted  on  any 
different  basis  from  those  of  other  men  of  equal  intelligence,  except 
in  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  justify  our  judgment?  Yet  too  often 
medical  organizations,  as  well  as  individual  physicians,  have  taken 
the  position  that  they  were  the  courts  of  last  resort ;  that  it  was  their 
special  function  to  dictate  the  terms  of  public  health  legislation,  and 
that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  public  to  accept  their  decisions  and  ac- 
quiesce in  their  judgment.  Now  the  average  American,  while  willing 
to  do  anything  that  he  knows  to  be  for  his  own  benefit,  is  impatient 
of  restriction,  and  especially  of  restriction  which  he  cannot  under- 
stand.   He  resents  paternalism  and  dictation,  and  objects  to  having 
1  Read  before  the  Utah  State  M'edical  Association,  Salt  Lake  City,  Utah, 
September  30,  1914,  and  reprinted  from  North  West  Medicine,  December,  1914, 
and  January,  1915. 
