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 II.

CONSCIENCE IN MEDICINE.

VERY intelligent member of the medical profession will certainly recognise the special value of human conscience in the profession.

The problems which are involved in the practice of the beneficent art, the absolute reliance which the anxious patient is compelled to place in his physician, the helplessness of the poor, who form so large a majority of those who need medical aid, and who are without the defences of wealth and station, show the need of keen moral sense, as well as intelligence, in those who practise the art of medicine.

The very discoveries of medical science enforce this necessity; for the possibility of abuse in the employment of such beneficent agents as