Page:A Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America - John Morgan.djvu/13

 charging for attendance under its proper name. For Practitioners must be paid for their time and attendance, as well as for their Medicines, under whatever name they make the charge. Indeed the most extensive practice otherwise would be insufficient to support a family in a becoming manner, as the greatest part of their time is employed in visiting the sick. The paying of a physician for attendance and the apothecary for his Medicines apart is certainly the most eligible mode of practice, both to patient and practitioner. The apothecary then, who is not obliged to spend his time in visiting patients, can afford to make up medicines at a reasonable price; and it is as desirable, as just in itself, that patients should allow fees for attendance, whatever it may be thought to deserve. They ought to know what it is they really pay for Medicines, and what for physical advice and attendance.

Nobody, I believe, will deny that the practice of rating Medicines, at such a price as to include the charge for Medicines and attendance, is liable to gross impositions on the part of ignorant medicasters, too many of whom swarm in every city. Patients who are kept in ignorance of what price Medicines are, considered separately, and what is the value of physical skill and attendance, naturally think the original cost of Medicines, which are comparatively cheap, to be very dear, and undervalue the skill of a physician,