Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1881 — A Doctor’s Liability. [ARTICLE]

A Doctor’s Liability.

It is related, as a legend of the medical fraternity, that the Emperor Augustus was once so highly pleased at a cure effected in himself by his doctor, Antonins Musa, tnat he raised that gentleman to the rank of Knight, and relieved the whole profession from the burden of taxation. Probably at no time before or since that event has the lot of the physician been such a happy one. In the earlier days of Rome the practice of medicine was despised and confined to the humbler ranks of society and to slaves. Not until the influence of Grecian civilization made itself felt in the Roman capital did physicians gain honor or standing. In the middle ages the calling suffered a relapse, to speak medically. Surgery was in ill-repute, and Sprengel tells us that in Germany no artisan would em ploy a young man as an apprentice without a certificate that he was born in marriage of honest parents, and came of a family in which were found neither barbers, bathers nor “skinners,” as surgeons were called. Even at the present day, although the meritorious claims of the medical and surgical practitioner have been recognized and an honorable social status awarded him, his mind is not at rest. The advancement and refinement of ideas have begotten deeper anxieties and a feeling of responsibility. So jealously does the law guard the lives and persons of the people, that every time the physician writes a prescription, or the surgeon makes an incision, he takes Ids purse, his liberty, or perhaps his life in his hand. The risk is not all on the part of the patient, despite a popular impression that the only pocket-book likely to be depleted or the only life liable to be sacrificed, is that of the sick man.— Oliver E. Lyman, in Popular Science Monthly.