Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/381

 CHAPTER XIX. THE PHYSICIAN. His Proud Achievements — His Solemn Oath — His Ethics — The True Physician — His Reward — His Delicate Relation to the Human Family — His Inventions and Discoveries Free Gifts — The Pioneer Doctor — His Character — His Services — His Lim- itations — The March of Medicine — Biographies — A Roll of Honor — The Goodhue County Medical Society — The Twen- tieth Century — Preventive Medicine — The Physician as an Educator.— By George C. Wellner, M. D. "Men most nearly resemble the gods when They afford health to their fellow men." In an age when, in the combat of man against man, heroes are worshipped according to the number they slay in battle, it is inspiring and elevating to be permitted to pay tribute to the men who won glory in fighting disease and through whose devotion and skill thousands of useful lives have been saved and been made happy. "For every man slain by Caesar. Napoleon and Grant in all their bloody campaigns, Jenner, Pasteur and Lister have saved alive a thousand." The first anaesthetic has done more for the real happiness of mankind than all the philosophers from Socrates to Mills. Society laurels the soldier and the philosopher and practically ignores the physician. Few remember his labors, for what Sir Thomas Browne said three hundred years ago is surely true : "The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit to perpetuity." "Medicine is the most cosmopolitan of the three great ^learned' professions. Medicine never built a prison or lit a fagot, never incited men to battle or crucified anyone. Saint and sinner, white and black, rich and poor, are equal and alike when they cross the sacred portals of the temple of .Esculapius." No other secular profession has ever reached such a consciousness of duties which it corporately owes to the rest of the world. What 315