Article January 15, 1916 Issue

There is now and then a physician and surgeon who, in the...

New Haven (Conn.) Register

There is now and then a physician and surgeon who, in the eyes of his fellows, must be reckoned terribly "unprofessional." One of the tenets of the profession is to preserve an unbroken air of deep and mysterious wisdom in the presence of the "invariably" ignorant layman, while maintaining a no less solemn front of infallibility in the presence of fellow physicians. The bluff of knowing it all has to be kept unbroken. It must be an awful strain. Is it surprising that there should now and then stray into the sacred circle of the profession a man with a human sense of the fitness of things?

Perhaps it is because he is really big enough to be independent that Dr. John B. Deaver, the distinguished surgeon, talked right out to his fellows at a medical meeting in Philadelphia recently. He told them, if he is correctly reported, that many physicians made errors, and that every young surgeon would have to fill a graveyard before he became an accomplished practitioner. As respects the public, it may be that this is the brutal attitude of "What are you going to do about it?" He was talking, however, to doctors. It is most to the point that he was talking right out, whether or not he intended to have his remarks get any considerable publicity.

For thereby are we, the public, warned. We are warned that among certain members of the profession an indifference to the ultimate welfare of the public. We are experimental stuff—just subjects. We may be mediums for the demonstration of the wonders of medical skill, or we may be food for graveyards, just as it may hap. It may make a great difference to us which we are, but it is all in a day's work to the operator. We take all the risk. If we win we pay. If we lose the estate pays. The doctor wins in any case. This is a brutal way of putting it, but however brutal it is, we need the enlightenment. That this spot-light plays on only a minor portion of the medical profession, while the major part is made up of sincere, self-sacrificing men, with the high purpose to save lives and promote health and only a secondary thought of reward, only modifies the risk we take, for we are not always skilled to discriminate until it is too late. So we may regard the frankness of Doctor Deaver as saving frankness.

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