Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/382

 316 HISTOEY OF GOODHUE COUNTY are the principles which a profession, more profuse in its disinter- ested charities than any other profession in the world has estab- lished for its guidance? It was about 2,300 years ago that the practicers of the art of healing began to take an oath emphasizing the responsibilities which the nobility and holiness of the art imposed upon them. Hippocrates, forever to be revered, gave the oath his name. When a Greek physician took the Hippocratic oath and a graduate of the modern medical school takes it, the act is one not only of obligation for himself, but of recognition of a great benefactor of mankind. The Hippocratic oath assumes that simply because a man has learned the art of restoring the sick to health he has passed into a realm in which the rules of personal selfishness are immediately abridged, if not expunged, and recognized in a sys- tem of principles and rules governing all licensed physicians, and enforced and respected by high-toned and cultured gentlemen — a standard of professional honor so sacred and inviolate that no graduate or regular practitioner will ever presume or dare to violate it. Robert Louis Stevenson, seeing the life of the medical man only from without, was not far wrong when he spoke of the modern scientific medical man as probably the noblest figure of the age. The noble and exalted character of the ancient pro- fession of medicine is surpassed by no sister science in the mag- nificence of its gifts. Reflecting upon its purity, beneficence and grandeur it must be accorded to be the noblest of professions. Though the noblest of professions it is the meanest of trades. Unless the physician will live a life of purity, of virtue, of honor and of honesty, he should seek a livelihood elsewhere, and "In- sult not the gods by striving through base methods and ignoble ambitions in resembling them." The true physician will make his profession no trade, but will administer Ids duties with the love of man in his heart and the glory of God in his soul, his aim will be : To be accurate in diagnosis and painstaking in prescribing, to allow no prejudice nor theory to interfere with the relief of human suffering and the saving of human life ; to lay under contribution every source of information, be it humble or exalted, that can be made useful in the cure of disease ; to be kind to the poor, sympathetic with the sick, ethical toward medical colleagues and courteous toward all men ; to regard his calling as that of one anointed to holy office, firmly convinced that no nobler work can be given to man, and to go forth to his labor with love for humanity, inspired with a reverent assurance that for this cause came he into the world. The reward of such a man. says Prof. T. Gaillard Thomas, "Comes from the hand of no emperor; his glory from the appre-