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plished during the attendance of the latter, he is entitled to the fee, but should resign the patient to the practioner first engaged.

ART. VI.-Of differences between Physicians.

§ 1. Diversity of opinion, and opposition of interest, may, in the medical, as in other professions, sometimes occasion controversy and even contention. Whenever such cases unfortunately occur, and cannot be immediately terminated, they should be referred to the arbitration of a sufficient number of physicians, or a court-medical.

As peculiar reserve must be maintained by physicians towards the public, in regard to professional matters, and as there exist numerous points in medical ethics and etiquette through which the feelings of medical men may be painfully assailed in their intercourse with each other, and which cannot be understood or appreciated by general society, neither the subject matter of such differences nor the adjudication of the arbitrators should be made public, as publicity in a case of this nature may be personally injurious to the individuals concerned, and can hardly fail to to bring discredit on the faculty.

ART. VII.-Of Pecuniary Acknowledgements.

§ 1. Some general rules should be adopted by the faculty, in every town or district, relative to pecuniary acknowledgments from their patients; and it should be deemed a point of honor to adhere to these rules with as much uniformity as varying circumstances will admit.

CHAPTER III.

OF THE DUTIES OF THE PROFESSION TO THE PUBLIC, AND OF THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE PUBLIC TO THE PROFESSION.

ART. I.-Duties of the profession to the public.

1. As good citizens, it is the duty of physicians to be ever vigilant for the welfare of the community, and to bear their part in sustaining its institutions and burthens: they should also be ever ready to give counsel to the public in relation to matters especially appertaining to their profession, as on subjects of medical police, public hygiene, and legal medicine. It is their province to enlighten the public in regard to quarantine regulations,-the location, arrange

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ment, and dietaries of hospitals, asylums, schools, prisons, and similar institutions,-in relation to the medical police of towns, as drainage, ventilation, &c.,-and in regard to measures for the prevention of epidemic and contagious diseases; and when pestilence prevails, it is their duty to face the danger, and to continue their labors for the alleviation of suffering, even at the jeopardy of their own lives.

§ 2. Medical men should also always be ready, when called on by the legally constituted authorities, to enlighten coroners' inquests and courts of justice, on subjects strictly medical,-such as involve questions relating to sanity, legitimacy, murder by poisons or other violent means, and in regard to the various other subjects embraced in Medical Jurisprudence. But in these cases, and especially where they are required to make a post-mortem examination, it is just, in consequence of the time, labor and skill required, and the responsibility of the risk they incur, that the public should award them a proper honorarium.

§ 3. There is no profession, by the members of which, eleemosynary services are more liberally dispensed, than the medical, but justice requires that some limits should be placed to the performance of such good offices. Poverty, professional brotherhood, and certain public duties referred to in Section 1 of this chapter, should always be recognized as presenting valid claims for gratuitous services; but neither institutions endowed by the public or by rich individuals, societies for mutual benefit, for the insurance of lives or for analogous purposes, nor any profession or occupation, can be admitted to possess such privilege. Nor can it be justly expected of physicians to furnish certificates of inability to serve on juries, to perform military duty, or to testify to the state of health of persons wishing to insure their lives, obtain pensions, or the like, without a pecuniary acknowledgement. But to individuals in indigent circumstances, such professional services should always be cheerfully and freely accorded.

§ 4. It is the duty of physicians, who are frequent witnesses of the enormities committed by quackery, and the injuries to health and even destruction of life caused by the use of quack medicines, to enlighten the public on these subjects, to expose the injuries sustained by the unwary from the devices and pretensions of artful empyrics and impostors. Physicians ought to use all the influence they may possess, as far as professors in Colleges of Pharmacy, and by exercising their option in regard to the shops to which their prescriptions shall be sent, to discourage druggists and apothecaries from vending quack or secret medicines, or from being in any way engaged in their manufacture and sale.

ART. II.-Obligations of the public to physicians.

§ 1. The benefits accruing to the public directly and indirectly from the active and unwearied beneficence of the profession, are so

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numerous and important, that physicians are justly entitled to the utmost consideration and respect from the community. The public ought likewise to entertain a just appreciation of medical qualifications; to make a proper discrimination between true science and the assumptions of ignorance and empiricism,―to afford every encouragement and facility for the acquisition of medical education,—and no longer to allow the statute books to exhibit the anomaly of exacting knowledge from physicians, under liability to heavy penalties, and making them obnoxious to punishment for resorting to the only means of obtaining it.

REPORT

OF THE

COMMITTEE TO REVISE THE CONSTITUTION.

1864.

To the Indiana State Medical Society:

MR. PRESIDENT-The Special Committee appointed at the last meeting to revise the Constitution, beg leave to report, that it has attended to the duty assigned it, and present herewith a revised Constitution and By-Laws, embracing the essential points of the Constitution and By-Laws under which the Society has so long existed, and adding some things that your committee believe will tend to facilitate the working of the Society, and give it increased power to accomplish the object of its organization. These additions need not be rehearsed here, as they will fully present themselves in the reading of the draft submitted. Some of them originated with the committee, others were suggested by the members of the Society in the discussion of organic laws in several of our later annual meetings.

Accompanying its own draft of a revised Constitution your committee has great pleasure in presenting another draft forwarded to the Chairman by Major Wm. Lomax, of the Army of the Cumberland, an ex-president and honored member of this Society, who sends with the draft a letter of explanation and exhortation, which is also submitted.

This draft is indorsed, approved, and earnestly recommended for adoption by

Wm. Lomax, Surgeon 12th regiment Indiana Volunteers.