Chapter XIX: Trials and Pleasures of a Medical Life, 404

Great mental and bodily toil. Irregularity of life. No command
over time. Exposure to causes of disease. Physicians a short-lived
class. Compensation generally small. Medicine not a money-making
business. Less obligation felt by many to pay physician than to pay
others. Physician often obliged to see the quack and hobby-rider
getting rich by their impostures. Facility with which the people are
imposed upon, a great trial to the honorable practitioner. Especially
so when imposition is practised by his brethren. Valuable lives
sacrificed to ignorance and unskilfulness. Witnessing sad scenes.
Mutual sympathy and confidence add in such cases to physician’s
sorrow. Irreligion and vice at hour of death. Frequency of sad
scenes in times of pestilence. Ingratitude of those on whom the
physician has conferred favors. Services of faithful physician not
to be measured by pecuniary considerations. Dismissing physician
for frivolous or improper reasons. Not so much gratitude in the
world as commonly supposed. Virtuous and vicious poor. Clergymen
generally attended upon gratuitously. What, therefore, is due from
them to our profession. Conduct of some of them. Want of respect
to the medical profession, on the part of the community generally.
Public ingratitude. _Pleasures of a medical life._ Medicine as a
science, full of interest. Its intimate union with other sciences.
Enthusiasm in its pursuit. All discoveries, however small, add to the
capabilities of the medical art in relieving misery and prolonging
life. Pleasure in unraveling the perplexities of medical practice—in
guiding and assisting Nature’s processes when salutary, and in
arresting them when not so. Mental management of the sick. Results
of practice of the judicious physician gratifying. The physician a
hopeful, cheerful man. Gratification of his humanity and benevolence.
His attachments. His social enjoyments. His opportunity for exerting
a good moral influence.