pass out again as indifferent as he
entered. The profession has moral relations and moral duties.
We should serve our patients with all our heart and soul;
and they should know that we do it not merely because it is
our business, or because we expect to be supported or to grow
rich by the occupation, but because we feel for their welfare
as friends, and as friends will strive for their advantage.
To the existence of these mutual feelings, nothing
contributes more than the attendance of physicians in cases
of midwifery. The interest excited in these cases is strong.
Women seldom forget a practitioner who has conducted them
tenderly and safely through parturition -they feel a familiarity
with him, a confidence and reliance upon him, which are of
the most essential mutual advantage in all their subsequent
intercourse as physician and patient. On the other hand, the
physician takes a deeper interest and feels a more intimate
and personal connexion with those, whom he has attended in
this scene of suffering and danger, than with patients of
any other description.
It is principally on this account that the practice
of midwifery becomes desirable to physicians. It is this which
ensures to them the permanency and security of all their other
business. There are few men in good practice, especially those
who have any inclination for literary pursuits, who would
not be glad to relinquish the pecuniary emoluments of this
department of business, for the comparative leisure and tranquillity
they would enjoy, provided they could at the same time retain
all the other advantages derived from this source. Simply
in a lucrative
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