MEDICAL ETIQUETTE

Evening Star, Issue 19637, 17 August 1927, Page 7

MEDICAL ETIQUETTE

“The golden rule of the doctor’s attitude to tho public is service,” says ‘ Tlie Times,’ iu reviewing a volume entitled ‘ The Conduct of Medical Practice*’ published by tho editor ot the ‘Lancet.’ “The chief difficulty attending it is the fact that no layman is in a position to form an instructed judgment on the merits of purely medical questions. In other words, contributions to medical science must be judged in the first instance by medical men and not by the public. It follows from this that direct appeals to public opinion by doctors who have failed to win the support of professional opinion ought, generally speaking, to be suspect, though even here, as is admitted, a hard-and-fast line cannot always he drawn. It lollows also that tho public must he protected sa far as possible against claims and statements which, to the instructed mind, arc palpably false. This need of protection lies at tho foundation of that code of behaviour which is commonly known as ‘medical etiquette.’ But ‘medical etiquette’ is not in any sense a rigid system. It is bound to undergo transformations of various kinds iu accordance with tho changes which must necessarily occur in the conditions ot tho public need which it serves. Thus, as public opinion becomes better instructed in the methods of science, the danger that false hopes may be aroused by charlatans and selfdeceived persons will grow smaller, and the necessity of exercising restraint on the less cautious members of the medical profession will bo relaxed. . % ■ The medical profession on this showing need not resent public interest in its doings or public discussion of its administration, since these express the same impulse of service which makes the doctor the critic of so many social usages. And the public ought "to recognise that, just as its vision is wider than that of any professional body, so the knowledge of the medical profession of its own needs is greater than that possessed by the mass of the people. So long as the behaviour of doctors is determined by the interaction of public opinion and professional knowledge there is bound to he criticism, and even at times resentment; but there is bound also to development and progress.”-