the Association may expel them from membership upon the recommendation of the Executive Committee.

ARTICLE XIV.

RULES OF ORDER.

RULE 1.-Fifteen members shall constitute a quorum in executive session; but a meeting may be called to order in scientific session when a quorum is not present.

RULE 2.—In the absence of the President and Vice-Presi• dents, the meeting may elect any member present to act as President pro tempore.

RULE 3.-When a motion is under debate, no motion shall be received except a motion to adjourn, to lay on the table, for the previous question, to postpone, to refer, or to amend, which several motions shall have precedence in the order in which they are enumerated in this roll.

RULE 4.-Motions to adjourn, to lay on the table, and for the previous question, shall be decided without debate.

RULE 5. During the scientific sessions, a motion to go into executive session shall be in order, and such motion shall be decided without debate.

RULE 6.-Every member present at a meeting shall vote on all questions in executive session, unless excused from voting by the President with the consent of the Association.

RULE 7.—The ayes and nays on any question, when called for by five members present, shall be decided without debate and fully recorded in the minutes.

RULE member shall have the right to speak on the question under consideration more than five minutes except by permission of the Association.

RULE 9.—Cushing's Manual shall govern all questions of Parliamentary Law not mentioned in these By-Laws.

ARTICLE XV.

The Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association are adopted as part of these By-Laws.

ARTICLE XVI.

AMENDMENTS.

Amendments, alterations or additions to these By-Laws may be made by a two-thirds' vote of the members voting at an annual meeting, or at any stated meeting; provided that notice of such amendments, alterations or additions shall have been presented in writing at the meeting immediately preceding, and that a copy of such amendments, alterations or additions shall have been sent to each member, with the notice for the meeting at which they are to be considered.

Signed,

E. ELIOT HARRIS, Committee: JOS. E. MESSENGER, M. C. O'BRIEN.

17

CODE OF MEDICAL ETHICS

OF THE DUTIES OF PHYSICIANS TO THEIR PATIENTS, AND OF THE OBLIGATIONS OF PATIENTS TO

THEIR PHYSICIANS.

ARTICLE I.-DUTIES OF PHYSICIANS TO THEIR PATIENTS.

SECTION 1.-A physician should not only be ever ready to obey the calls of the sick, but his mind ought also to be imbued with the greatness of his mission and the responsibility he habitually incurs in its discharge. These obligations are the more deep and enduring, because there is no tribunal other than his own conscience to adjudge penalties for carelessness or neglect. Physicians should, therefore, minister to the sick with due impressions of the importance of their office, reflecting that the ease, the health and the lives of those committed to their charge depend on their skill, attention and fidelity. They should study also in their deportment so to unite tenderness with firmness, and condescension with authority, as to inspire the minds of their patients with gratitude, respect and confidence.

SECTION 2.-Every case committed to the charge of a physician should be treated with attention, steadiness and humanity. Reasonable indulgence should be granted to the mental imbecility and caprices of the sick. Secrecy and delicacy, when re

quired by peculiar circumstances, should be strictly observed; and the familiar and confidential intercourse to which physicians are admitted in their professional visits should be used with discretion and with the most scrupulous regard and fidelity and honor. The obligation of secrecy extends beyond the period of professional services; none of the privacies of personal and domestic life, no infirmity of disposition or flaw of character observed during professional attendance should ever be divulged by the physician except when he is imperatively required to do so. The force and necessity of this obligation are indeed so great that professional men have, under certain circumstances been protected in their observance of secrecy by courts of justice.

SECTION 3.-Frequent visits to the sick are in general requisite, since they enable the physician to arrive at a more perfect knowledge of the disease-to meet promptly every change which may occur and also tend to preserve the confidence of the patient. But unnecessary visits are to be avoided, as they give useless anxiety to the patient, tend to diminish the authority of the physician, and render him liable to be suspected of interested motives.

SECTION 4.—A physician should not be forward to make gloomy prognostications, because they savor of empiricism by magnifying the importance of his services in the treatment or cure of the disease. But he should not fail, on proper occasions, to give to the friends of the patient timely notices of danger when it really occurs, and even to the patient himself, if absolutely necessary. This office, however, is so peculiarly alarming when executed by him, that it ought to be declined whenever it can be assigned to any other person of sufficient judgment and delicacy. For the physician should be the minister of hope and comfort to the sick, that, by such cordials to

the drooping spirit, he may smooth the bed of death, revive expiring life, and counteract the depressing influence of those maladies which often disturb the tranquility of the most resigned in their last moments. The life of a sick person can be shortened not only by the acts, but also by the words or the manner of the physician. It is, therefore, a sacred duty to guard himself carefully in this respect, and to avoid all things which have a tendency to discourage the patient and to depress his spirits.

SECTION 5.-A physician ought not to abandon a patient because the case is deemed incurable; for his attendance may continue to be highly useful to the patient and comforting to the relatives around him, even in the last period of a fatal malady, by alleviating pain and other symptoms and by soothing mental anguish. To decline attendance, under such circumstances, would be sacrificing to fanciful delicacy and mistaken liberality that moral duty which is independent of, and superior to, all pecuniary consideration.

SECTION 6. Consultations should be promoted in difficult or protracted cases, as they give rise to confidence, energy and more enlarged views in practice.

SECTION 7.-The opportunity which a physician not unfrequently enjoys of promoting and strengthening the good resolutions of his patients, suffering under the consequences of vicious conduct, ought never to be neglected. His counsels, or even remonstrances, will give satisfaction, not offense, if they be proffered with politeness and evince a genuine love of virtue, accompanied by a sincere interest in the welfare of the person to whom they are addressed.

ARTICLE II. OBLIGATIONS OF PATIENTS TO THEIR PHYSICIANS. SECTION 1.-The members of the medical profession, upon whom is enjoined the performance of so many important and