TO E. C. PERCIVALa. PERMIT me, my dear Son, to offer to your ac ceptance this little manual of MEDICAL ETHICS. In the composition of it, my thoughts were directed towards your late excellent brother, with the tenderest impulse of paternal love; and not a single moral rule was framed without a secret view to his designation, and an anxious wish that it might influence his future conduct. To you, who possess in no inferior degree my esteem and attachment, who are prosecuting the same studies, and with the same object, my solicitudes are naturally transferred: and I am persuaded, these united considerations will powerfully and permanently operate upon your ingenuous mind. It is the characteristic of a wise man to act on determinate principles; and of a good man to be assured that they are conformable to rectitude and virtue. The relations in which a Physician stands to his patients, to his brethren, and to the public, are complicated and multifarious; involving much knowledge of human nature, and extensive moral duties. The study of professional Ethics, there a [See below, p. 22.] fore, cannot fail to invigorate and enlarge your understanding; whilst the observance of the duties which they enjoin, will soften your manners, expand your affections, and form you to that propriety and dignity of conduct, which are essential to the character of a gentleman. The academical advantages you have enjoyed at Cambridge, and those you now possess in Edinburgh, will qualify you, I trust, for an ample and honourable sphere of action. And I devoutly pray, that the blessing of GOD may attend all your pursuits, rendering them at once subservient to your own felicity, and the good of your fellow-creatures. Sensible that I begin to experience the pressure of advancing years, I regard the present publication as the conclusion, in this way, of my professional labours. I may, therefore, without impropriety, claim the privilege of consecrating them to you, as a paternal legacy. And I feel cordial satisfaction in the occasion of thus testifying the esteem and tenderness, with which, whilst life subsists, I shall remain, Your affectionate friend, THOMAS PERCIVAL. Manchester, Febr. 20, 1803. [This anticipation was correct: Dr. Percival died in the following year, Aug. 30, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.] AUTHOR'S PREFACE. THE first chapter of the following work was composed in the spring of 1792, at the request of the Physicians and Surgeons of the Manchester Infirmary: and the substance of it constitutes the code of laws, by which the practice of that comprehensive institution is now governed. The Author was afterwards induced, by an earnest desire to promote the honour and advancement of his Profession, to enlarge the plan of his undertaking, and to frame a general system of Medical Ethics; that the official conduct and mutual intercourse of the Faculty might be regulated by precise and acknowledged principles of urbanity and rectitude. Printed copies of the scheme were therefore distributed amongst his numerous correspondents, by most of whom it was warmly encouraged, and by many of them was honoured with valuable suggestions for its improvement. Whilst the Author was thus extending his views, and carrying on his work with ardour, he lost the strongest incentive to its prosecution, by the death of a beloved son, who had nearly completed the course of his academical education, and whose talents, acquirements, and virtues, promised to render him an ornament to the healing art. This melancholy event was followed, not many years afterwards, by a second family loss equally afflictived; and the design has ever since been wholly suspended. The Author now resumes it, animated by the hope that it may prove beneficial to another son, who has lately exchanged the pursuits of general science at Cambridge, for the study of Medicine at Edinburgh. He feels at the same time impressed with the conviction that the languor of sorrow becomes culpable, when it obstructs the offices of an active vocation. "I hold every man," says Lord Bacon f, a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto. 66 [James Percival, who died Febr. 25, 1793, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, of a malignant fever, which he had contracted while prosecuting his medical studies at Edinburgh. See Memoirs of Dr. Percival, prefixed to his "Works," p. clxxix.] d [The death of his eldest son the Rev. Thomas Bassnett Percival, in the thirty-second year of his age, May 27, 1798. See Memoirs &c. p. ccii.] e [Edward Cropper Percival, the editor of his father's collected Works, and author of "Practical Observations on Typhous Fever," 8vo. 1819; who settled first at Dublin, and afterwards at Bath, where he died, 1819, at the age of 36.] In the preface to his Elements of the Common Laws of England. (Works, vol. iv. p. 9.) |