Hospitals, Medical Science, and Public Health: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER, ON OCTOBER 1st, 1908
Permit me on the threshold of this new infirmary to make a few remarks on hospital purposes and management. Of the management of the Manchester Infirmary I know nothing, so that under this head no word of mine can be charged with censure or innuendo. I speak generally when I say that a prevailing error in hospital government is the failure of the lay managers to act in frank and equal partnership with the medical managers, whereby the full cooperation and best results of money and knowledge are more or less diminished; the machine runs with needless friction, and occasionally jams.
That money is of more value than knowledge is a vulgar and erroneous notion; yet in our partnership too often the lay manager presumes that the physician or surgeon is at the hospital not his partner but in some sort his servant. Occasionally indeed he ventures to depreciate the equal benevolence of the medical services, on the ground that if unsalaried they "pay" in profit and reputation. But do we find that in other professions public officers—as a clerk to justices, for instance, as a solicitor to a great banking company, as a consulting engineer or chemist to gas or water works are unsalaried, because the office carries with it opportunities, reputation, and fees! By no means, The other day I asked a distinguished physician and a distinguished surgeon on the staffs of two leading London hospitals if it paid them, however indirectly, to devote thus their priceless services for the sick, and for the raising up of successors like themselves? They answered almost in the same words, "The time I give to the hospital costs me 20 or 30 guineas a week"—surely a more than ample pecuniary recompense for any promotion in earlier years. Moreover, even in London, and more generally in the provinces, a man of parts and address, starting independently of a hospital, has opportunities of material gain on the average as good as, and far quicker in return than, those of his fellow student who, more disdainful of commercial balances, at the hospital devotes himself in the first instance to science and charity. Yet it is on these men who love the work that the virtues and the honours of a great hospital chiefly depend.
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That money is of more value than knowledge is a vulgar and erroneous notion; yet in our partnership too often the lay manager presumes that the physician or surgeon is at the hospital not his partner but in some sort his servant. Occasionally indeed he ventures to depreciate the equal benevolence of the medical services, on the ground that if unsalaried they "pay" in profit and reputation. But do we find that in other professions public officers—as a clerk to justices, for instance, as a solicitor to a great banking company, as a consulting engineer or chemist to gas or water works are unsalaried, because the office carries with it opportunities, reputation, and fees! By no means, The other day I asked a distinguished physician and a distinguished surgeon on the staffs of two leading London hospitals if it paid them, however indirectly, to devote thus their priceless services for the sick, and for the raising up of successors like themselves? They answered almost in the same words, "The time I give to the hospital costs me 20 or 30 guineas a week"—surely a more than ample pecuniary recompense for any promotion in earlier years. Moreover, even in London, and more generally in the provinces, a man of parts and address, starting independently of a hospital, has opportunities of material gain on the average as good as, and far quicker in return than, those of his fellow student who, more disdainful of commercial balances, at the hospital devotes himself in the first instance to science and charity. Yet it is on these men who love the work that the virtues and the honours of a great hospital chiefly depend.
Hospitals, Medical Science, and Public Health: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER, ON OCTOBER 1st, 1908
Permit me on the threshold of this new infirmary to make a few remarks on hospital purposes and management. Of the management of the Manchester Infirmary I know nothing, so that under this head no word of mine can be charged with censure or innuendo. I speak generally when I say that a prevailing error in hospital government is the failure of the lay managers to act in frank and equal partnership with the medical managers, whereby the full cooperation and best results of money and knowledge are more or less diminished; the machine runs with needless friction, and occasionally jams.
That money is of more value than knowledge is a vulgar and erroneous notion; yet in our partnership too often the lay manager presumes that the physician or surgeon is at the hospital not his partner but in some sort his servant. Occasionally indeed he ventures to depreciate the equal benevolence of the medical services, on the ground that if unsalaried they "pay" in profit and reputation. But do we find that in other professions public officers—as a clerk to justices, for instance, as a solicitor to a great banking company, as a consulting engineer or chemist to gas or water works are unsalaried, because the office carries with it opportunities, reputation, and fees! By no means, The other day I asked a distinguished physician and a distinguished surgeon on the staffs of two leading London hospitals if it paid them, however indirectly, to devote thus their priceless services for the sick, and for the raising up of successors like themselves? They answered almost in the same words, "The time I give to the hospital costs me 20 or 30 guineas a week"—surely a more than ample pecuniary recompense for any promotion in earlier years. Moreover, even in London, and more generally in the provinces, a man of parts and address, starting independently of a hospital, has opportunities of material gain on the average as good as, and far quicker in return than, those of his fellow student who, more disdainful of commercial balances, at the hospital devotes himself in the first instance to science and charity. Yet it is on these men who love the work that the virtues and the honours of a great hospital chiefly depend.
That money is of more value than knowledge is a vulgar and erroneous notion; yet in our partnership too often the lay manager presumes that the physician or surgeon is at the hospital not his partner but in some sort his servant. Occasionally indeed he ventures to depreciate the equal benevolence of the medical services, on the ground that if unsalaried they "pay" in profit and reputation. But do we find that in other professions public officers—as a clerk to justices, for instance, as a solicitor to a great banking company, as a consulting engineer or chemist to gas or water works are unsalaried, because the office carries with it opportunities, reputation, and fees! By no means, The other day I asked a distinguished physician and a distinguished surgeon on the staffs of two leading London hospitals if it paid them, however indirectly, to devote thus their priceless services for the sick, and for the raising up of successors like themselves? They answered almost in the same words, "The time I give to the hospital costs me 20 or 30 guineas a week"—surely a more than ample pecuniary recompense for any promotion in earlier years. Moreover, even in London, and more generally in the provinces, a man of parts and address, starting independently of a hospital, has opportunities of material gain on the average as good as, and far quicker in return than, those of his fellow student who, more disdainful of commercial balances, at the hospital devotes himself in the first instance to science and charity. Yet it is on these men who love the work that the virtues and the honours of a great hospital chiefly depend.
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Hospitals, Medical Science, and Public Health: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER, ON OCTOBER 1st, 1908
Hospitals, Medical Science, and Public Health: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER, ON OCTOBER 1st, 1908
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| BN ID: | 2940014964913 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Unforgotten Classics |
| Publication date: | 07/17/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 118 KB |
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