Page:The oath of Hippocrates.djvu/11



and that would not weigh with those who merited it. Extrusion from a town was a small matter to those who had been already "moved on." There were, moreover, itinerant practitioners, among whom the expelled one might count himself and so get lost to sight. "Of all arts (it says) medicine is the noblest, yet on account of the ignorance of those who practise it and of those who judge regarding them, it is held inferior to all arts, of which error the chief cause seems to be that in towns there is no punishment, that medicine alone is exempt from punishment save disgrace, and this little affects those also who in deed seem very like the masks of tragedy, which are not the actors: just as there are many physicians in name, very few in fact." The Nomos may not have been written by Hippocrates, but it expresses his lofty conception of his art.

The vow of secrecy touches the highest level of honour: it is not professional reticence it inculcates—that is the least of its aims. The practitioner pledges himself to forswear gossip: he is not to talk of what he sees or hears in the ordinary intercourse of life, if the matters in question are such as it would be better to leave alone. Of course he is to keep to himself what he learns in the houses of the sick and concerning them—that is only varying the promise to enter such a house for the sole good of the sick. It is a lofty honour which leaves unsaid what might harm any one, be he sick or whole. This aspect of professional secrecy is not sufficiently prominent in the comments on questions affecting the duty of practitioners. The church catechism asks the youth to "keep his tongue from evil speaking, lying, and slandering," and if the author or compilers of the Oath had expanded their views we should probably have had the same suggestive collocation. So there is a chance of the medical man "enjoying his life and art in happiness, and having credit among all men for all time." Many years ago a well-known criminal was removed to a large town, and the jail surgeon, who had visited her in the forenoon of her arrival, was said not to have reached home till evening, telling to everyone in the interval all that he had picked up in his professional interview. Public contempt was entertained, not for the professionally indiscreet man, but for the miserable gossip whose empty head was so engrossed with the novelty of what a