THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF MEDICINE is not responsible for the sentiments ex-
pressed in any paper or article published in the BULLETIN.
The medical profession stands in peculiar relation to the general
body politic. Its knowledge is a thing strange to even the
well-educated lay individual; its ethics are a thing not understood
nor understandable by the layman; its members, through the
whole course of their special training and their subsequent ac-
tive lives, are by the very nature of their calling, moved away
from the elements which make for commercialism. Removed,
isolated, standing apart from the general public and almost in-
variably not understood, the needs of our profession and its ills
can be recognized only by ourselves and remedied only by our
own effort. What layman can say, without long and careful
study and consultation, which medical school is giving proper
training and education and which is not? Where is the ordi-
nary layman who can so clearly see and point out the danger to
the public from permitting any one, without restriction, to prac-
tise the art of medicine? Or from permitting partly educated
graduates in medicine to do the same thing? These questions,
to us, are as elemental as the abuses of the nostrum evil have now
become; but they are not so to those outside of our profession.
Obviously, if we are to do our duty to ourselves as honest men,
and to the community in which we pass our lives and enjoy the
privileges of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we must
undertake to correct those evils which we see within our pro-