ment. Therefore it is to be hoped that no one will undertake to establish even a mute connection with that business in this reference to "dead-heading" in physicians' practice. Those little services should always be rendered cheerfully and gladly, for in so doing you make a deposit in a bank upon which at some time in the future you may wish to draw a check to a much larger amount than your contribution, and the hearty good will with which your service was attended will then relieve that sense of present obligation that would otherwise disturb your serenity of mind. Still, if Dr. Croesus, who lives at such a long distance from your abode, not only desires to do so, but actually does offer an honorarium, your honor will not permit you to decline, for it is a rule that no one has a right to impose an obligation upon another which the party receiving does not exception may be made. For instance, a boy is bewish to incur. This is a rule, however, to which some ing punished "for his own good." It may be needed, but he is not willing to be put under such an obligation! Much rather would he prefer to return it in kind.

But returning to the subject, if the usual fee be tendered you may receive it as "legal tender," being not too dollarous" about it.

Absence From Practice.

There are many circumstances that will arise in daily practice compelling the absence of a physician from his patients for a day or more, and as it is his duty to see that those whose lives are entrusted to him should be cared for a contingency may arise where he is obliged to request some of his professional brethren to officiate for him, and such request should be complied with if possible, and the service be performed with the utmost consideration for the interests and character of the family physician. In this case the visits should be noted and the accounts and emoluments be awarded to the absent brother. This, however, is a short line route

and to be used in emergencies only. For it does not. include a gratuitous service for a fun-loving doctor, who, happy in the possession of a few spare hundreds, frequently devotes his time to that interest. mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, i. e., "the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness." He, packing up his gripsack, puts a notice in the daily papers to the effect that the eminent Dr. Goodtime has taken his departure for the Continent and will visit the fashionable watering places before his return. Asking you to attend to his practice during his absence, accept if you choose, making a satisfactory division of the pecuniary returns and exercising the same care and courtesy in reference to the absent physician as you might desire in return from him under like circumstances. Right is right, and it is no more than just that in obstetrical and important surgical cases, which give rise to unusual fatigue, anxiety and responsibility, that the physician officiating should receive the fees as far as feasiblefor while it is within range of the cable tow to do a reasonable amount of gratuitous labor for the sake of professional courtesy, it cannot be reasonably expected that a physician should wear himself out in the service without some return. The possession of a diploma issued by a college of good repute is prima facie evidence of its owner's having a regular medical education, and so far as his cerebral developments will allow he has absorbed "quantum suff" to entitle him to respectful consideration as a physician. In days gone by (at least it is to be hoped they are gone forever), when doctors cultivated an owllike look of profound wisdom and an artistic method of sniffing the head of a cane as a prominent part of a medical education, when the chief, if not the total, treatment for all cases consisted in massive doses of calomel, opium, tartar emetic and quinine, with bleeding during and after the case (especially the latter), it would seem as though consultations could only have been called as a quiet way of making business good; a spacious method of gaining two

fees for rewriting old prescriptions. But in these days of scientific progress, emancipated from the soul and body destroying method of routine practice, consultations are a necessity when there comes before us a knotty case for solution. Then must we look about for those on whom the mantle of Galen and Hippocrates has descended to such good purpose that their advice will be valuable in solving the problem of diagnosis or treatment and who may we select?

Consultations.

The American Medical Association have laid it down as a rule in their code of ethics that "any one who has a license to practice from some medical board of known and acknowledged respectability recognized by the American Medical Association and who is in good moral and professional standing in the place in which he resides" is a proper person for consultation on medical topics. But no one can be considered as a regular practitioner or a fit associate in consultation whose practice is based on an exclusive dogma to the rejection of the accumulated experience of the profession and of the aid actually furnished by anatomy, physiology, pathology and organic chemistry. Upon this apparently straightforward and honest statement hangs the persecution that has fallen upon our own school in times past and the shadow of the prescription hangs over us yet, although much lessened from its former degree. Indeed some persons seem to translate the meaning of the foregoing as follows: The American Association consider the homoeopathic practice contrary to medical ethics. The homoeopaths use the allopathic text-books, avail themselves of all the allopathic discoveries and teaching, and then treat their patients with an art of which we are in willful ignorance from a refusal to read or accept their studies in materia medica, and then rejecting our scientific purging and bleeding have the gratification of seeing their patients recover with less mortal

ity and suffering than do ours, and as they persist in doing this we consider it in the highest degree reprehensible and we will have nothing to do with them. At any rate that is the way it reads in the minds of many physicians. This spirit is a relic of the dark ages; a weakness that as the world advances in intelligence and civilization is being obliterated slowly perhaps, but surely. It is certainly illogical for any society to assert that a well-educated physician of good moral, social and professional standing in the community in which he resides is not a fit associate in a consultation because he differs from the aforesaid society in his method of treatment of a given case. As Dr. Shipman writes:

"When allopaths disagree among themselves in almost every respect, how can they call upon others to agree with them? Who can define what is now the self-styled regular school of medicine? Call them allopathic-they say they do not practice by contraries-though everybody knows that in the main they do. Call them the old school, they will fly in your face and tell you, with Braithwaite, that 'this is a total misrepresentation;' that 'medicine is a progressive science, and has wonderfully improved of late;' call them a new school, and they will talk to you about Hippocrates and Galen, as if they had inherited all their wisdom, and with it a prescriptive right to drug all the sons of men for all time to come. But who among them can refine the system of regular medicine, so-called, in such a way that even half of the nominal adherents of the school will subscribe to it? And if this cannot be done, if they cannot erect a standard to which they themselves conform, whence their right to arrogate to themselves the title of orthodox and scout all others who choose to follow their own judgment? Where is the physician who never fails to cure cases which are curable? Where the physician who has nothing to learn? Now, if I have something to learn, who can tell but that it may be in possession of that man whom I look upon as an outcast, because he does

not 'conform? What is true of a physician is true of a school, and if the so-called regular school of medicine is not in possession of all needful medical knowledge, and who has the impudence and assurance to say that it has, who knows but what some other school has it?"

So far from Dr. Shipman.

I therefore assert that any person, be he homœopathic or allopathic, eclectic or hydropathic, so that he possesses a fair medical education, is of good moral standing and in reputable practice, is by virtue of his acquirements, and the propriety of his life, entitled to all the courtesy and respect that one physician should exhibit to another, and we should not refuse to hold a consultation at the request of a patient on the ground of difference of opinion in therapeutics, lest in so doing we advertise our unfitness for any liberal profession.

While engaged in a consultation the American Code asserts that "no rivalship or jealousy shall be indulged and candor, probity and all due respect should be exercised toward the physician having charge of the case." In our code we need not say this, for a gentleman will always be so at such times, and a boor will have but slight regard for the ordinary proprieties of life and lacks an important factor to entitle him to the privilege of a consultation. Where two or three are gathered together to consult, the physician who has the case in charge asks the patient such questions as he may think necessary to make the case clear; following him the consulting physician is at liberty to cross-question as he may desire, after which they retire to discuss the case, and if not too hurried to retail medical news and compare notes of practice to an extent of time long enough to earn the consultation fee and the gratitude of the patient and family. Of course, all this is not to be communicated to the waiting friends, but the attending physician is made the mouthpiece for the time and gives the opinion and treatment decided