DIFFERING DOCTORS.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1167, 14 April 1874, Page 4

DIFFERING DOCTORS.

[WESTPOEJ 1 EVENING STAR.] The southern journals of late have dilated freely on the unenviable notoriety achieved by certain members of the medical fraternity in the display of animus one towards the other, and the indulgence in a propensity to speak ill of, or in colonial parlance, jump on one another. There has been of late in Dunedin certain cases demanding judicial investigation, and wherein medical evidence has been necessary. But so many medical men so many different opinions, and the members of the profession called upon for evidence seem to have forgotten the little aphorism about dwellers in glass houses, and esich has gone in fiercely against the opinions of his professional brethren, and given damnatory evidence in certain charges of malpractice. Such controversy has amused the many and empty-headed and gratified the splenetic, but has made the

judicious grieve, and the press, in commenting thereon, lias spoken plainly against the incongruity and evil tendency of such contention and the irreparable injury thereby done both to the profession and the public. The lliverton Star says :—" Is it absurd to suppose that while your lawyer may give an erroneous opinion, your divine be wrong in his doctrine, and your engineer incorrect in his estimates, with impunity your doctor alone shall have legal pains and penalties brandished before his eyes if he is not always coirect in his diagnosis, and always successful in his treatment 1 Medical and surgical treatment does not solely depend upon books, or the instructions received twenty or thirty years ago from a lecturer. Eminence has only been attained by intellectual superiority, enabling a man to turn his experience to account in correctly theorising on every fresh combination of symptoms or appearances. Now, no two have received precisely the. same education, or possess minds of the same calibre, or have exactly the sam 3 experience. Hence, in a ease presenting any obscurity, it is not strange that their impressions and treatment differ. We commend for perusal a work entitled " Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence," and direct attention more particularly to the learned author's adduction that " where there is such a diversion of opinion ainojg men of equal experience, a practitioner has a right to expect that a verdict will be returned in his favor ; since it is not to be supposed that in order to recover payment of a bill, or to answer a charge of unskilfulness, a man's practice should receive the unanimous approval of the whole of his professional brethren, especially in cases where there is an acknowledged difference of opinion respecting the treat ment." The Dunedin people, though sharp, are terribly behind the times, for what is introduced as a novelty there, was played out in the United States years ago, where the disease carried its own remedy ; for "when it arrived at such a pitch that damages were recovered from a medical man for vaccinating a female rather near the elbow than usual, the public fouud that the fees were likely to become proportionate to the risk, and that in every case where difference of opinion was possible, consultations were iu- . sisted on, and consultation fees had to be disbursed.