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The New York Medical Journal of May 12, 1883, at page 512, contains a very able and temperate communication upon The New York Code of Ethics, by C. B. Higgins, M. D., of Peru, Indiana.

This writer aims to limit himself to "but one of the objections advanced by the opponents of the change," and lays no claim to originality in his position, because the position taken is not new.

He says, "The principal objection urged against the new code is 'that it obliterates the broad distinction which was previously easily recognized between scientific medicine and medical charlatanry.' Were the ignorant and uncultivated alone imposed upon by charlatans, this objection would be insurmountable."

Then he goes on to show that this last proposition not being true, the objection taken for his text falls with it, and he then shows clearly enough that there are a sufficient number of individual examples of highly cultivated minds, at all periods of civilization, which accept charlatanry, to warrant a line of argument in favor of his conclusions that the policy of the new code is wiser and better than that of the old code, and therefore should be generally adopted as the best policy for the interests involved.

As long as this line of argument may be reproduced it cannot be too often reiterated that the issue involved in this controversy is not one of policy but is one of fundamental principle. Had the author of the paper read his text more deeply,—farther beneath the surface, he would have found it to be the enunciation of a principle and not of a policy. Let the final words of his quoted sentence be read, instead of "between scientific medicine and medical char

latanry," between right and wrong,-between truth and error,then it will be easily seen that this is an issue upon a principle, and not upon a policy,-that moral rectitude and honor are involved,and not only involved but constitute the entire basis of defence of the old code. The policy which may be best adapted to conciliate the popular favor of a small class of educated and cultivated individual minds, existing from the time of the Esculapian priests down to the present, may not be unimportant, but it is entirely subordinate to the principle of right and wrong,-truth and error,and when such policy subverts and overturns the principle,—or even ignores it,—or slides past it upon the plausibility of superficial and ingenious lines of argument, then the policy is unsafe and unwise.

This author, in common with many others, therefore simply fails to go deeply enough into the subject to find the underlying basis of the defence of the old code against the attacks of the new. No dispassionate writer on the defence has ever objected to the largest toler ance of individual opinion, and the largest liberty of conscience where individual opinion alone was in question, and the old code has somewhat notoriously leaned away from its perpendicular moral rectitude in favor of this tolerance of individual opinion, and has thus furnished a superficial and plausible argument against its utility by doing so. But tolerance of individual opinion and conviction is a very different thing from the surrender of a principle of general rectitude of purpose and action for a large profession. That profession may be very highly educated and cultivated as a whole, yet in its individuality it must be made up of all shades and degrees of education and cultivation, and of moral sensitiveness to convictions, and therefore the formulation of a general code of principles for guidance and government must be as useful and necessary here as for any other interest of civilization against anarchy and unorganized license. Communities in interest do exist without formulated laws, either moral or statutory, and yet this is not a good argument against a better government through formulated law, because all the best government throughout all time has been through the restraints of formulated law in opposing the license or liberty of individual or minority convictions.

Charlatanry is often placed, as by the author of the paper under review, in the charitably chosen position of honest minority convictions, and as supported by a minority popular favor, and it is proposed upon these grounds as a wise, beneficent and hu

mane policy to obliterate from all record the distinctions or principles which oppose it, and leave them to the misty indistinctness of unformulated and unexpressed individual conviction, that is to anarchy. This position would be the less objectionable to assume had there never been a code, as in some European countries, where the issues may have possibly been as well settled by peculiar circumstances as in countries which have adopted codes. But for countries which have formulated their principles and adopted them as a code, now to abandon them, not simply by disuse, but by a deliberate act of repeal and revolution, the movement has a bad significance, the effect of which in demoralization it is difficult to over-estimate.

The position is simply this: Many years ago the nation formulated a code by applying the common principles of justice and equity to foster and support a high standard of professional rectitude, and to draw a broad distinction between right and wrong,— truth and error;-and the professional nation has lived under this code for many years. But now it is proposed, by a part of the general profession, not simply to abandon this code, but to repeal it by a deliberate act; or to enact a clause denying a prominent principle and affirming an opposite one. Substituting the rule of individual conviction and judgment for collective judgment, and placing the individual above the restraints of law as the expression of collective wisdom and justice.

Farther, this author says: "Were the ignorant and uncultivated alone imposed upon by charlatans,, the objection (to obliterating the broad distinction between scientific medicine and medical charlatanry) would be insurmountable,”—and in saying this he, in one important sense, gives up his case. Those who are imposed upon by charlatanry are all certainly ignorant and uncultivated in the direction of their imposition, for they neither know nor believe that they are imposed upon, nor that those who impose upon them are charlatans, although the evidence of the facts are as open to them as to others, so that whether educated and cultivated or not, in a general sense, they are both ignorant and uncultivated on the special subject upon which they are deceived and duped,—and are willfully ignorant in proportion to their higher and better culture on other subjects, because, the principles of rational medicine are as open to them as any other branch of natural science. No generally educated and cultivated person could be duped upon subjects within the scope of his education and cultivation, and can only be duped