Osler: Quarrels among medical disciplines; Commercialism

1903 Speach to New Haven Medical Association:

Quarrels in medicine seem to make a pretty chapter in the history of medicine. Each generation seems to have had its own.

Quarrel among physicians has existed even in ancient times...

The Coans and the Cnidians, the Arabians and the Galenists, the humoralists and the solidists, the Brunonians and the Broussaisians, the homeopaths and the regulars in different centuries, rent the robe of Aesulapius. But these larger quarrels are becoming less and less intense...

Standard of the profession:

One has only to visit different parts of the country and mignle with the men to appreciate that everywhere good work is being done, everywhere an ernest desire to elevate the standard of education and everywhere the same self-sacrificing devotion on the part of the general practitioner.

Men will tell you that commercialism is rife, that the charlatan and the humbug were never so much in evidence, and that in our ethical standards there has been a steady declension. These Elijahs who are always ready to pour out their complaints, mourning that they are not better than their fathers...But, I am filled with thankfulness for the present and with hope for the future.

Garth in 1699 states the following:

"Now sickening Physick hands her pensive head

And what was once a Science, now's a trade."

Of medicine, many are of the opinion....that ancients has endeavoured to make it a science and failed, and the moderns to make it a trade and have succeeded. To-day the cry is louder than ever, and in truth there are grounds for alarm; but on the other hand, we can say to these Elijahs that there are more than 7,000 left who have nto bowed the knee to this Baal.

p.52-53 Osler by Charles Bryant (Oxford Univ. Press, 1997)