The importance of the truths now insisted on can be more fully realized in their wide bearings by experienced and religious physicians than by any other class in the community. If they will learn to trust to the sacredness of the maternal instinct, and instruct mothers, as well as fathers, in these vital truths concerning our sexual structures, they will exercise a mighty influence in the elevation of our race.
To the younger members of the profession I wish to offer some farther hints on the direct practical bearing of the foregoing truths. The facts of our human organization should not only guide the medical advice given in the consultation-room, but caution us respecting the methods to be adopted in dealing with the poor, and suggest the direction in which national sanitary measures should proceed.
The immense power of this passion of sex in the human race must never be ignored in relation to either men or women. The beneficent control which the human mind can exercise over the passion points out that item in the human materia medica, which more than any other the physician must strive to secure for the benefit of his patient, viz.—force of will. He is bound to declare the sovereign efficacy of this natural specific, and enforce the methods of securing it. All physical and hygienic means must be called upon to develop and support that power of will and that mental purity which alone can govern wisely the human sexual nature.
There is another point which cannot be too strongly insisted on. The personal modesty of patients—that elementary virtue in Christian civilization—must be carefully cherished by the physician, who, more than any other, is acquainted with its influence on the sexual nature. The common resort to sexual examination is an evil grown up in medical practice of comparatively modern date. The use of the speculum should be strictly limited by absolute necessity. Its reckless use amongst the poor is a serious national injury. I know from fifty years’ medical experience amongst the poor, as well as the rich, that this custom is a real and growing evil. It should be a last resort of medical necessity, and it is so regarded by thoughtful physicians. That it is sometimes necessary is unhappily true; and when a poor sufferer learns from her trusted adviser that such investigation is quite unavoidable, acceptance of such judgment is the part of wisdom and true modesty. But it is essential that the medical judgment thus rendered should be final—the result of age and special experience. The wise custom of many physicians to decline practice in which a very special training has not given them the positive knowledge of an expert should be a universal rule. It is a social wrong when the serious character of this branch of medicine is not conscientiously acknowledged. The natural sentiment of personal modesty is seriously injured amongst respectable people by the resort to a succession of incompetent advisers.
A really serious and national evil results from the thoughtless treatment of the poor. In dispensary and hospital, and wherever medical assistance is rendered to the exposed and helpless classes, the first duty of the physician is to respect personal modesty, or to instil it if the habit has been lost. Every physician, man or woman, is bound to cherish with reverence the great conservative principle of society, personal modesty and self-respect. This is a point on which the medical practitioner cannot avoid a moral responsibility. Physicians are the special guardians of health from infancy onward. They possess the means of acquiring the fullest knowledge of the double elements of human nature—the interaction of mind and body. From their culture, their social position, and the authority which they legitimately exercise, the weighty responsibility of rightly guarding the human faculties rests chiefly upon them. In all those points where the physical health of a nation is inseparably connected with its moral health, they are more responsible than any other class of the community for the moral condition of their country.
All medical advice and all medical measures must, therefore, be guided by the positive fact that human sex differs from brute sex in the possession of a mental element which is capable of elevating and controlling it, and which must never be lost sight of in dealing with human beings.
To the rising members of our noble profession I earnestly present the foregoing facts for their Christian and patriotic consideration, believing that when they fully realize these great truths they will embrace them with the generous enthusiasm of youth. Thus, while guiding their future practice by sound principles in relation to the care of our human organization, they will enforce these truths by the strongest of all arguments—the true manliness of their own lives.
CHAPTER VI
Medical Guidance in Legislation
All thoughtful members of the medical profession will appreciate the power of education exercised by law, particularly on the rising generation. As students of human physiology, knowing the inseparable connection of mind and body, they can more fully understand how the laws of a country mould social customs, and recognise the gradual but widespread deterioration of social morality resulting from unjust laws.
In all legislation which endeavours to protect and improve national health the medical profession is necessarily consulted. The advice of experts is indispensable in framing measures which affect such important subjects as wholesome food-supply, the healthy housing of a people, the prevention and spread of epidemic diseases, etc. Indeed, so important is the connection of a sound body with a sound mind, and so linked together are all classes of society, that common-sense and rational foresight will more and more recognise that health regulations are a subject of national concern as well as of individual instruction, and the advice of the medical profession will be increasingly needed.