Originally published in 1911 in the journal “American Medicine”,
this article discusses what we are so aware of now, the introduction of the
profit motive into the medical profession.
The Church, the Law, and
Medicine have for ages been linked together in the thought and speech of men as
the "learned professions," the term "learned" having reference more especially
to humanistic learning; and the "professional classes" have ever been held to be
in some degree apart and in some respects more eminent and more worthy of
esteem, if not of reverence, than those of commercial or other even more nearly
personal occupations. And, in so far as the members of these three professions
have lived up to this ideal standard,
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that it should be so.
That is why the
introduction of "commercialism" into the medical profession has always been so
strenuously combated by the best elements in that profession. These three
learned professions have each to deal with man from the mental, moral, and
physical aspects of his personality. They deal with the material conditions and
things external to man, not primarily but only from the viewpoint of their
effect on his individuality as a being. The lawyer, perhaps,
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the cleric or the physician, seems to deal at times directly with things
external to man's personality; his property; but even so, the infringement of
his possessions, rather than any direct regard to the possessions themselves as
such, that in the last resort is seen to be the basis of such action.
The
purpose of the man of commerce, on the other hand, is merely to supply man with
external material things, and that, for the most part, primarily, and not
incidentally, with profit to himself; too often, indeed, he seeks to create a
want hitherto unfelt by man, in order that he himself shall reap the profit of
catering to it. In this light, then, an utterance of the Rev. C. C. St. Clare,
at the opening of the Twelfth Annual School of Instruction for Health Officers
in the State of Vermont, deserves special notice. Portending the major thrust of
Major General Steel and in discussing a paper by Dr. George M. Kober on Diseases
which menace Public Health and Morals, he said:
"There should be a
closer fellowship between all professional men for the betterment of our State.
Clergymen, for we are not an unapproachable lot, are average citizens, and I am
sure would welcome a closer fellowship with the members of the other professions
for the study of the life in the different communities, to the end that higher
standards might become established."
From his other remarks it may be
gathered that the reverend gentleman, for one, is a broad gauge humanist the man
whose life is spent in close touch with the lives of his flock, who has intimate
acquaintance with their external struggle for existence as well as with their
internal struggle with existence, can always be,
christian louboutin shoes,
and often is, an able coadjutor with both the earnest physician and the
honorable lawyer.
Theological accord is by no means essential to
harmonious and profitable cooperation in that wider field of humanity as a
whole, with a separate and particular aspect of which each profession has its
special concern. The elevation of the ideal of individual self-fulfillment, by
whatever route attained,
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2, is the first and essential step in the betterment of the human race as a
whole; and there are so many tangential points to the labors of the cleric, the
lawyer, and the physician, that their better acquaintance, closer intercourse,
and more harmonious cooperation than has been commonly the case in these latter
days, are greatly to be desired.
Perhaps we can take a page from history
and learn the lesson, and begin the painful process of removing the profit
motive from health care.
