Cabot on Ethics

In Boston, Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot pontificates unofficially over the medical profession, doubtless naturally for he has been teaching as well as practicing and writing for many a year.

In Chicago Dr. Morris Fishbein functions as Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. When he writes, he (theoretically) addresses 90,000 individual practitioners throughout the U. S.

Both men are mighty individualists. They are also both skilled publicists, know how to phrase their extensive knowledge for either a professional or a popular audience, as needs arise.

So last week physicians and surgeons, internes and nurses every where eagerly sought the latest issue of the Journal. They had already read Dr. Cabot's article on "Ethics and the Medical Profession" in the Survey Graphic. (He is writing a series on ethics of theology, education, medicine and social work for this magazine of sociological viewpoint.)

Dr. Cabot has decided that in medicine, as in the other professions, ethics has three aspects: 1) each one for himself, so far as he can get away with it; 2) minimum ethics, acting according to the "rules of the game" agreed upon explicitly and implicitly by all in competition; and 3) Christian ethics, satisfying real and permanent desires, not obvious ones, in others as well as in oneself. He emphasized that the medical profession was the first of all to oganize a complete ethical code with the Hippocratic oath as its core.

But what the medicos concentrated upon quickly was Dr. Cabot's apparent scorn of the individual, isolated practitioner. Individualist himself, yet he believes in group practice, in a close union of specialists who will be able to examine the patient from every conceivable aspect. This the solitary doctor cannot well do; the maze of medical knowledge and the intricacies of disease are too devious. He must call in consultants, who diagnose as well as possible from a brief examination.

In respect to the individual practitioner Dr. Cabot regards the Code of Ethics as of interest. Better he believes is group practice, wherefrom arises the intimate contact of medical men with other medical men "better than themselves, where, by osmosis, nobler habits of thought and action seep across from teacher to pupil, from chief to interne, from colleague to colleague without a word spoken on the subject [of ethics]." In extension of this, to his mind beneficial, situation, comes his approval of commercial medical corporations (like the Life Extension Institute) selling periodical physical examinations.

This last is especially anathema to Dr. Fishbein, who caters to the individual physician and surgeon. He published last week in the Journal a biting condemnation of Dr. Cabot's views. His editorial concluded: "One is inevitably reminded of certain direct communications with the Deity* which from time to time inspired prophets have claimed as their sole prerogative. Nevertheless when some 90,000 physicians are concerned, it would not perhaps be wholly wise to rely on the inevitable receipt and comprehension of such telepathic influences."

Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot is not to be confused, as so generally happens, with his equally distinguished brother, Dr. Hugh Cabot, Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan since 1919, Dean of that medical school since 1921. Dr. Hugh taught surgery at the Harvard Medical School from 1910 to 1918, where Dr. Richard C., four years older, had been teaching medicine since 1899. (He still is there, as professor of Medicine since 1919.) Both served during the War, Dr. Hugh with the British, Dr. Richard C. with the U. S. forces.

Whereas Dr. Hugh has concentrated on professional problems (wrote Modern Urology, 1918), Dr. Richard C. has deployed into many fields. He is an indefatigable worker. With equal keenness he handles his classes, toys in his laboratory with his microscope, writes in his study his esteemed professional treatises or hurries off his popular volumes of dicta,/- addresses professional or lay bodies, earns an excellent living.

Those who know Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot feel that he owes considerable of his sociological curiosity to his wife, Ella Lyman Cabot. They were married in 1894, three years after she completed some special work at Radcliffe and two years after he received his M. D. degree at Harvard. While he was Visiting Physician to Channing House, Boston (1895-8), and later Physician to the Outpatient Department of Massachusetts General Hospital (since 1898), she studied further at Radcliffe (1897-1900). That fall of 1900 Harvard College permitted her to take graduate courses in logic and metaphysics. This was while she was teaching ethics and psychology in Boston private schools. Then while her husband was establishing his professional reputation and then enjoying it, she organized her own remarkable career.

She has been a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education since 1905, has taught at Wellesley School of Homemaking, has been President of the Tuckerman School of Religious Education in Boston, a member of the Council of Radcliffe, President of the Radcliffe Auxiliary, Vice President of the National Religious Education Association, member of the Massachusetts Civic League, of the Boston Women's Municipal League, and of the Massachusetts Women's Educational Association. Her books: Everyday Ethics, Report of (Massachusetts) State Board of Education, Ethics for Children, A Course in Citizenship, Volunteer Help to the Schools, Our Part in the World, Seven Ages of Childhood.

*Doubtless a rude reminder of the Boston ditty:

Then here's to the City of Boston, The home of the bean and the cod. Where Cabots speak only to Lowells, And the Lowells apeak only to God.

This was parodied in 1923, when the Massachusetts Cabots sought vainly to prevent a Kabotchnick family of Pennsylvania from changing their name to Cabot:

Then here's to the City of Boston, The town of the cries and the groans. Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotchnicks. And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.

/-Clinical Examination of the Blood, Serum Diagnosis of Disease, Physical Diagnosis. Case Histories in Medicine, Social Service and the Art of Healing. Differential Diagnosis, What Men Live By, Laymen's Handbook of Medicine, Rewards and Training of a Physician, Social Work. His later books reveal a shrewd estimate of the popular intelligence. While they never decoy the reader into bypaths, still they are in startling contrast to the keen methodology of his earlier, more scholarly tomes.