Finally, a great source of happiness is afforded to the truly benevolent physician in the opportunity which he has for exerting a good moral influence. When by his instrumentality the abode of vice and misery has been converted into one of virtue and peace, and especially when his counsel and influence have been the means of saving a soul from death, he has a higher joy than all success however brilliant, and honor however profusely awarded, and gratitude however ardent, can impart to his soul.
In conclusion I remark, that, though the trials and disappointments and mortifications of a medical life are numerous, very vexatious, and sometimes almost insupportable, yet the pleasures which come from the sources to which I have alluded vastly predominate over them all, and make the practice of medicine, when pursued with right motives, as a noble profession, and not as a trade, to be in the main eminently satisfactory and delightful.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] To estimate the public benefits which the medical profession has conferred upon the world, you need only to look at the zealous, and I may say leading, agency, which it has always exercised in instituting and maintaining Hospitals, Asylums for the Insane, Institutions for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, and the Blind, and Associations for the advancement of the sciences.
[46] Hence comes the fact, that many of the most eminent men in the various departments of science have been furnished from the ranks of the medical profession.
APPENDIX
LETTERS[47]
FROM A SENIOR TO A JUNIOR PHYSICIAN.
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PROMOTING THE RELIGIOUS WELFARE OF HIS PATIENTS.