A full report of the jury cause, Syme v. Lizars, on Thursday, March 12, 1840 / taken in shorthand by Simon Macgregor.

Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A full report of the jury cause, Syme v. Lizars, on Thursday, March 12, 1840 / taken in shorthand by Simon Macgregor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    are, indeed, a queer set, the doctors ! I shall read you a statement by one of themselves, descriptive of their extraordinary sensations, and irritability, which is the besetting sin of the doctors! Vituperation is the very lan- guage of the doctors—it speaks from the heart to the heart. The author of the passage, a doctor himself—will the Dean of Faculty allow me to mention his name, without being held as leading evidence? Dean No. Mr Robertson Well, then, the author, whom I may not name, is a doctor, and this is the doctor’s statement:—“ Whatever feeling may exist as to the manner in which he has treated the opinions of others, the au- thor knows that his efforts are perfectly sincere and well intended. In teaching the principles of a profession of such unbounded importance to mankind, he has ever felt himself called upon, by the combined influence of reason and humanity, to treat professional statements, theories, and practices, in the most unreserved manner. No duty is more incumbent on a medical writer, on whose labours the lives and happiness of thou- sands may depend. The author is not aware that he has ever been guilty of indulging in any expression that he would be afraid to repeat in the pre- sence of the persons whose opinions he has impugned ; neither can he be justly accused of bestowing praise from personal friendship, nor of con- demning from personal animosity,” and so forth. After thus praising him- self, he continues :—“ The author most heartily deplores the morbid sensi- bility and irritability which exist among medical men—no parallel to which can be found in the history of any other liberal profession. Few medical men can bear to know that the soundness of their opinions has been questioned ; they regard any such attempt as a signal of deadly personal hatred, and view it in the same light as if their moral charac- ter were maliciously assailed.” Gentlemen, we have a nice example of this in the great Anti-Pluggite, Professor Syine. The author goes on to say:—“ On what circumstance does this frame of mind depend ?” Listen to the philosophical reply: “ The author has always attributed it to an overweening conceit, selfishness, and pusillanimity.” 1 am very much of this doctor’s opinion. “ Some may object to these statements, how- ever true, being put in print, because they may think them calculated to injure the dignity of the profession, and to produce bad feeling. But the author cannot believe in the existence of real dignity and good feel- ini', where there is such a deplorable want of high-mindedness and moral courage ; besides which, these pages are written expressly for the pro- fessional, and not for the public eye, (so was the book in question.) It cannot be denied, that practitioners in medicine stand too low in the scale of public estimation, and that ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark !' ” Gentlemen, if there be something rotten in the state of Denmark, surely, it is not the great flslula case which is to remedy the evil. 1 his