"I embraced the medical profession a couple of
months ago. My first impressions are that there is much humbug therein, and
that, with the exception of surgery, in which something positive is sometimes
accomplished, a doctor does more by the moral effect of his presence on the
patient and family, than by anything else. He also extracts money from
them."—William James, future American pioneer of psychology (and brother
of novelist Henry James), offering his first dour impressions of medical
school, in a letter of February 21, 1864, quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought And Character Of William James, Vol. I (1935)
Some things just don’t change, even a century and a
half later…
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