Medical ethics : a lecture, delivered December 23, 1843, before the Ohio Medical Lyceum / by John P. Harrison.

  • Harrison, John P. (John Pollard), 1796-1849.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical ethics : a lecture, delivered December 23, 1843, before the Ohio Medical Lyceum / by John P. Harrison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    localized in mental depression, or in deranged sensations of some organ of the body. The mind as well as the body constitute the legitimate domain of the physician. To treat with levity, or con- tempt, the sadness aid sorrows of a darkened spirit is inhumane and derogatory to that dignity which attaches to medicine as an art of remedial interposition in disorders of both the mind and body; of the physical and metaphysical parts of our nature. Unseasonable sportiveness, ostentatious loquacity, and solemn pompousness, are alike unfit and inappiopriate in the sick chamber. A kind, cheerful, and polite deportment should be exhibited by the physician at the bed side. By a few well directed questions, and a careful scrutiny of the symptoms of the case, he will arrive at a correct diagnosis. In making your inquisition into the nature and seat of the disease begin at the nervous system—ascertain its condition—through the deranged sensations experienced by the patient in the form of pain, restlessness, morbid accuteness of the senses, dilated or contracted pupils, a sense of chilliness or the opposite, and a feeling of oppression in the precordial region.— Then investigate the condition of the secretories of the body— as denoted by the excretions and the secretions—such as those of the skin, liver, alimentary tube, kidneys, and the mucous tissue of the mouth. After which, by the pulse, and other evidences of gen- eral activity or circulation, as well as determinators of blood, dis- cover what the state of the lesions of circulation ; re, < r likely to be, if the present symptoms are not controlled. Never seem in a hurry nor agitated in conducting this examination, but go about the investigation of the case with a collected mind, and calm aspect of countenance. The medical practitioner should be all mind, all heart, all eye, all ear, and touch in conducting this in- vestigation into the nature and seat of his patient's disease, but he should at the same time possess that self-controlling spirit of phi- losophy, which shall enable him to see the point towards which all his inquiries tend. Despise not the phenomena of disease, in however mitigated a form they may appear. Obsta princijriis, should ever be our mot- to in contending with the various maladies which afflict our race.— Do not indulge in hasty prognostications. Never abandon a pa- tient to his fate. Discsedit often follows upon a hasty prognosti- cation, and abandonment of the patient, especially in acute disea- ses. Children are remarkably retentive of life, and evince great renitency against disease. Be guarded, therefore, how you give up the field by an inglorious flight—but if you are to be conquer- ed in the warfare, contend with unsubdued heroism to the last— and if incapable of saving the patient from the fatal catastrophe, soothe his pangs, and smooth his rugged path way to the tomb, by