While
reading “Medical Apartheid”, chapters 4 and 5, I suddenly realized that P.T.
Barnum, despite the negative attitude displayed in class, was more humane to
his display subjects than any doctor in any hospital in the 1800s was to his
patients.
Most
doctors upon graduation from their medical schools took the
Hippocratic oath. This oath reads, in
part, “abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, I will give no
deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel” this is
commonly paraphrased as “my treatment shall at least do no harm”.
If they did indeed take this oath, then their
treatment of the poor in the hospitals certainly tells us just how much their
word was worth and how honorable and trustworthy these men were.
Joyce Abbott
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