Doctors Versus Folks Author:Robert Tuttle Morris Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: doctors, particularly young men, who are ambitious to become the very best of men in their profession in every way, may have been instructed by teachers who... more » did not present to them the best of examples in ethics. When they see a statement of principles in print, the mere suggestion leads them to revolve in mind certain formulae relating to the gentleman in the profession. Thank God most young men have a natural desire to be fine! At least two or three generations of polite family environment are commonly necessary for producing men with true professional spirit, but nature in order to prevent too rapid progress, finds it best to set influences of decline at work. We then have men who are well qualified for an exhibition of true professional spirit but lacking that incentive to work which is found among those who are not at all sure of their social position. The latter struggle valiantly, making use of every means according to their lights for getting to a point where they and their descendants will in turn be in danger of meeting with nature's cultural limitations. We thus have an ever- changing mass in the professions, following the same laws of flux as those which regulate the development and senescence of protoplasmic combinations in general. What is the doctor's social position? That depends largely upon what he wishes it to be. There are three chief social sets in all civilized countries under present methods of organization. The doctor will join any one of the three, according to his taste and training. The fashionable set consists of people who have "passed up on their examinations" in theoretical morality, and having passed these examinations are then free to do well or badly as they please, knowingly. The criminal set consists of people who have not taken up st...« less