Medical Ethics Up-to-Date

NZMJ, 1924

(With acknowledgements to Dr. E. H. Dearborn, in “Pacific Coast Medical Journal.”)

If called by night to attend a stranger at a great distance, dress quickly and go, never stopping to ask who wants you, or if the bill will ever be paid, lest you be counted inhuman.

Never ask how many physicians are in attendance in a case, or how many kinds of patent medicines the patient is taking. Such curiosity on the part of the physician is vulgar.

Never insult a stranger by asking for credentials, nor a patient by asking for money—dollars and cents is the vernacular of lawyers, bankers, tradesmen and “workers.”

Never send in a “statement,” patients will think you are hard up.

In writing a prescription, invoke Jove and cultivate mystery; a splash of ink and wiggle of the pen is sufficient. The druggist will put in “something just as good.”

Be sure to taste of the medicine left by the other physician, and “wonder if it will kill you.” The remark is strictly original with you and impresses the patient and nurse with the brilliancy of your humour.

Be sure to mention the fact of your being overworked. Operative work, abdominal surgery, appendectomy, blood pressure, toxæmia, cholecystitis, are words that impress the laity. Use them often. Your wife must tell her friends how busy you are.

When going by a patient’s house, step in socially and tell her of some interesting case or of some operation you have just performed, and incidentally mention how busy you are.

Never be friendly with any other physician. It’s unethical.

If you think another physician makes five dollars more a month than you do, cut him dead.

If another physician’s name is mentioned in your presence, bite your tongue and compress your lips, and the patient will understand that your hypertrophied good principles keep you from “telling the truth, the whole truth,” and a few other things about him.

If called in after another physician has been treating a case of pneumonia, make your diagnosis “inflammation of the lungs,” and be sure to say if you had been called in twenty-four earlier you could have saved the patient.

Never (or rarely) tell the truth; patients won’t stand it. They will have you charge them up with one dollar and pay a liar 75 dollars in advance. The laity love a cheerful liar.

If the other fellow doesn’t think as you do, it proves his inferior intellect.

Don’t have your principles so high you can’t reach them.

Be generous before you are just—otherwise you will never be generous at all.