A code of medical ethics : with remarks on the duties of practitioners to their patients, and the obligations of patients to their medical advisers ; also on the duties of the profession to the public, and the obligations of the public to the faculty / by Jukes Styrap.

  • De Styrap, Jukes, 1815-1899.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A code of medical ethics : with remarks on the duties of practitioners to their patients, and the obligations of patients to their medical advisers ; also on the duties of the profession to the public, and the obligations of the public to the faculty / by Jukes Styrap. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

    9/80 (page 5)
    THE MEDICO-ETHICAL CODE. TO THE PROFESSION. There is probably no social position wliicli offers more power- ful incentives to all that is pure and honourable, unselfish and sincere, than the Medical Profession ; and none in which, as a rule, these exalted virtues are more conspicuously illustrated. It may be well, therefore, to offer a few remarks on the obligations which devolve upon medical practitioners—or, in other words, on the duties and rights of each to the other, to themselves, and to the public: and the converse—remarks which, as preliminary to laying down general and special rules for their guida,nce, will not, it is to be hoped, be deemed inappropriate. Truly, the medical is an honourable, a noble profession! having for its grand object the maintenance, or rather the restoration of health to man—health, the mainspring of human life—the stimulus to human exertion—without which the great workshop of human mechanism would pause, and progress itself come to an end. A sound mind in a sound body is justly cha- racterised as the noblest work of God. It is man in his best, in his purest state, and perfect in his physical development; nevertheless, he is not more exempt from the casvialties of disease and death than the smallest living monad ; to combat these, and by skill and judgment to, if possible, successfully overcome them, is a privilege and a sacred duty assigned to our profession—a faithful and conscientious discharge of which will ensure its own rich reward in the approval of ' the still small voice within'. Let lis, moreover, ever bear in mind that the temporal life of an immortal being is a solemn trust: and that for the talents and opportunities with which, in our special vocation, we have been