Originally published in 1911 in the journal “American Medicine”, this article discusses what we are so aware of now, the introduction of the profit motive into the medical profession The Church, the Law, and Medicine have for ages been linked together in the thought and speech of men as the "learned professions," the term "learned" having reference more especially to humanistic learning; and the "professional classes" have ever been held to be in some degree apart and in some respects more eminent and more worthy of esteem, if not of reverence, than those of commercial or other even more nearly personal occupations

In modern medicine, we take for granted the ability of doctors to use anesthesia, shielding us from the pain of surgery It has not always been this way; a great number of experimental anesthesias were tried over the years, some with horrific results, even death