Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/23

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CONSCIENCE IN MEDICINE
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schools and hospitals are of great value in educating our health guardians, how is it that a profound distrust of these institutions has grown up in our midst; that the support of hospitals becomes increasingly difficult, whilst at the same time the sentiment of benevolence and desire to help the poor is constantly extended?

How is it that the beneficent and necessary art of medicine no longer commands that respect and confidence which its essential character as part of our social institutions would seem to demand?

The answer to these serious questions involves both moral and intellectual considerations. These problems have arisen from failure to perceive that in education moral and intellectual activity cannot be advantageously divorced, or that one portion of our complex nature can be beneficially developed whilst other portions are entirely ignored or injured.

Our medical schools, whilst sharpening the intellectual faculties of their students, are not careful that their modes of teaching bring with them no deterioration of that important faculty of their students, the moral sense. As conscience