Our profession is nothing if not altruistic. It demands daily and hourly more of self-sacrifice, more of self-devotion, than any secular calling. Indeed, the comparison is often drawn between the nobility and necessity of the duties which we perform and those of him who by divine inspiration and laying on of hands has been called to succor the diseased soul. It is not my place nor is it my purpose to enter into a discussion of this point, and I mention it only to show that we are marked men in every community; that we are placed on a higher plane and that more is expected of us than of our brethren of the other liberal professions. This, indeed, is right, for no man, the priest possibly excepted, enters into such intimate relations with his people. He is ever present with them to share their sorrows and their joys, and in his position of family friend and family confessor it is his place to bind and salve wounds more deadly than those made by the hand of man. It is a popular impression that this close relationship between the physician and his people is one evolved by the brain of the novelist or one possessed by that most beloved, but now extinct, old family physician. Let us get this impression from our minds and let us realize that our duties, our responsibilities and our relationship to those we serve are just the same, are just as close, and are just as engrossing as they were when that dear old patriarch of the profession made his rounds, scolding some, chiding others and advising all to better, purer and nobler lives. Changed as our relationship to the community may be in some respects by the translation of many of the brightest and best of our cult into the ranks of the specialist, it is still and always will be the general practitioner who is looked up to as "the physician," and by his work in professional and private life our profession will be judged.
In the beginning of my paper I stated I could do little more than rehearse to you some of the old axioms and maxims that have been handed down to us for generations. I am aware that I have taught you nothing new tonight, and that I have not tapped that fountain of inspiration from which genius gushes in poetic or oratorical streams. I trust I may have convinced you that it is not amiss for us at times to hold close communion with our souls, and to take stock of our moral and professional assets. The further I have advanced the more fully I have realized how impossible it is to evolve new ideas or elaborate new creeds to supersede those by which the fathers lived and died and earned honor for themselves and our profession.
So we face today, gentlemen, just about the same propositions that have always been ours to meet, and what was ethical one hundred years ago is ethical now.
The science of human duty simply demands that you be honest to yourselves, honest to those you serve; that you may look every man squarely in the face and not as if you feared he had heard something you had said behind his back. May I quote to you the words of the Earl of St. Vincent to the immortal Nelson: "It is given to us all to deserve success; mortals cannot command it."
THE STUDY OF RECTAL SURGERY IN
NEW YORK CITY.
By J. Dawson Reeder, M. D.,
Lecturer on Osteology, University of Maryland,
Baltimore, Md.
Having decided to take a course in Rectal Surgery, I arrived in New York and matriculated at the New York Polyclinic Hospital on October 1st for a course of instructions under Prof. James P. Tuttle, and desire to herewith describe briefly my reception:
Professor Tuttle is a finished surgeon of the old school of gentlemen, a master of his art, and, under all conditions and circumstances, adheres strictly to the ethics of the profession. I was not only most cordially received by him socially, but was most fortunate in being honored by requesting me to assist him, or be present, on operations upon his private patients at an uptown hospital. This unexpected and friendly honor gave me an opportunity to observe closely the work of this great surgeon in detail, and I had the pleasure of witnessing every case under his care during my three months' visit. As to his colossal work on cancer of the rectum and sigmoid, his results are too well known for me to dwell upon at this time, and he has an enviable record which makes him the authority of this distressing malady which is so prevalent in the cases referred to the Rectal surgeon, and have so long been unrecognized by the general profession. I had the pleasure of witnessing him extirpate the rectum by his bone-flap and perineal route, and in some of these cases was honored by being his assistant. As to the method and technique in each of the above mentioned, I will endeavor to give later. Another very important point gained by association with this surgeon was, that my own theory as to the merits of the Whitehead operation were simply an endorsement of his teachings, namely, that this particular operation, while classical, was only justifiable in selected cases of hemorrhoids, while the Clamp and Cautery or the Ligature method had no restrictions as to variety or location of the pile mass.