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COPYRIGHT 1910

BY

THE GAZETTE PUBLISHING COMPANY

KAY PRINTING HOUSE, 66-68 CENTRE ST., N. Y.

THE

DIETETIC AND HYGIENIC GAZETTE

Vol. XXVI.

AMONTHLY JOURNAL PHYSIOLOGICAL MEDICINE

No. 1

Published by THE GAZETTE PUBLISHING CO., NEW YORK, January 1910

THE LESSENED ALLEGIANCE TO THE PHYSICIAN.

FROM various sources, in and out of the profession, comes the complaint or comment that the old-fashioned loyalty to the physician is a thing of the past. Like every other lapse from the standards of the "good old times" we believe that there is a tendency to be too pessimistic both in the sense that loyalty to the physician is by no means entirely lacking, and in the sense that a less fixed allegiance is not without its benefits.

First of all, it should be recognized that the physician is not the only professional man that has come down from his pedestal. Mere increase of density of population has so changed conditions that only a few small communities can continue to speak of the doctor, the squire, the minister, the teacher, etc. Even such communities are now within easy reach of larger ones and it requires no argument to explain the fact that with a dozen, a hundred or even, in the large cities, several thousand professional men of a kind, no individual or group can be regarded with the awe which a single available possessor of a certain kind of learning could command.

It also detracts from the dignity of any profession that the supply is far away beyond any possible demand, even with no direct allusion to the fact that keen competition often leads to undignified seeking for employment.

The general diffusion of education at present renders the doctor, the minister, the lawyer, the political leader, the scientific man of any profession liable to an intelli

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gent criticism which may respect actual attainments but which will feel no awe because of the possession of special knowledge and skill by another, and which will readily detect any false assumption of power. In several of our cities more than ten per cent. of the rising generation has a full high school education and nearly two per cent. of all men in the country are col

lege graduates.

lege graduates. The medical profession, while obviously better educated than the average of the population, is not on a particularly high level in this respect, as compared with the class of the community with which it is naturally associated. The average layman considers--and probably correctly-that, allowing for differences in personal adaptation to a particular career, he could have become an average physician if he had taken the prescribed course of study. Hence, the natural tendency is to employ a physician precisely as one employs a lawyer, plumber, painter, carpenter, etc., just so long as it is convenient to give work to a particular individual, with due regard to satisfactory performances, reasonable rates, and personal liking.

The very progress made by medical science is also responsible for the lack of sentiment toward the doctor. So long as medicine was an inexact, somewhat mysterious art, in which personal knack was supposed to play an important part and in which no one exceeded except by indefinite superiority of intellect or accidental acquisition of experience, the very intangibility of the power possessed by the pro

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