ARTICLE VIII.

PROVISIONS FOR AMENDMENTS.

Every proposal for altering or amending these By-Laws shall be made in writing; and if such alteration or amendment receive the unanimous vote of the members present, it shall be adopted; but if objections be made, the alteration or amendment shall lie over until the next annual meeting, when, if it receive the vote of twothirds of the voters present, it shall be adopted.

STANDING RESOLUTIONS.

The Society ordered fifty copies of the Transactions, over the number requisite for distribution by the Society, to be published. (Vide Transactions for 1863, p. 174.)

Resolved, That the members of this Society deem it unadvisable to send their students to schools whose teachers do not become members of a county society. (Vide Transactions for 1866, page 18.)

Resolved, That this Society earnestly recommends to the county societies the annual registration of all the regular practitioners of the State, and that the names and residences of such practitioners, with the names of the schools in which they may have graduated and the date of their diplomas, be annually reported to the President of the Society on or before the first day of each new year, in order that the same may be reported by him at each annual meeting. (Vide Transactions for 1869, page 275.)

Whereas, The meetings of this Society are a cause of great trouble and expense to the physicians of the place where they are held, therefore,

Resolved, That hereafter all public entertainments on their part be dispensed with, and that instead thereof there shall be an annual dinner, towards the payment of which each member subscribing to it shall contribute an equal sum. (Vide Transactions for 1870, page 23.)

Resolved, That this provision is not designed to conflict in any manner with the acceptance on the part of the Society of private entertainments by physicians and citizens of the place of meeting. (Ibid.)

Resolved, That the Committee be instructed to omit from the roll

of permanent members, according to the Constitution, all names in regard to which they have satisfactory evidence that they are no longer retained on the roll of members of the county society from which they were originally delegated, or through which they obtained their permanent membership in this Society. (Vide Transactions for 1870, page 26.)

Resolved, That the Committee be also instructed to print hereafter, for convenient reference, the names of the officers and members of all the county societies, together, at the end of each number of the Transactions, in alphabetical order, the officers of said societies to be designated by their appropriate initials. (Ibid.)

Resolved, That in order that the Transactions may serve more fully as a directory for learning the names and residences of the respectable practitioners in the counties in which county organizations exist, the societies be again urged to carry out more faithfully the law of this Society, requiring each county society to furnish annually for publication a correct list of its officers and members.

Resolved, That since many numbers of the Transactions are entirely out of print, the Permanent Secretary and Treasurer be authorized to exchange any numbers of the Transactions of which there are on hand more than five copies for any number of which the Society has none. (Ibid.)

Resolved, That in the future a committee of three on unfinished business shall be appointed at the beginning of each annual session. (Vide Transactions for 1873, page 31.)

CODE OF MEDICAL ETHICS.

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

ART. I.-Duties of physicians to their patients.

§ 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. Those 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.

§ 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 required 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 to 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.

§ 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.

§ 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 notice 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 tranquillity 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 a 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.

§ 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 independ ent of, and far superior to, all pecuniary consideration.

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

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