bility and 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 limit should be placed to the performance of such good offices. Poverty, professional brotherhood, and certain of the public duties referred to in the first section of this article, 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 militia 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 injury 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 empirics and imposters. Physicians ought to use all the influence which they may possess, 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 or sale. ART. II.-Obligations of the public to physicians. 8 1. The benefits accruing to the public, directly and indirectly, from the active and unwearied beneficence of the profession, are so 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 a liability to heavy penalties, and of making them obnoxious to punishment for resorting to the only means of obtaining it. ILLINOIS STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY. A convention of the physician of Illinois was held in the City of Springfield, on the 4th of June, 1850, for the purpose of forming a State Medical Society. Dr. Rudolphus Rouse, of Peoria, was called to the chair, and Dr. E. G. Meek, of Chicago, was appointed secretary. On motion, it was Resolved, That the secretary read the plan of organization of the National Medical Association, which, with such modifications as may be necessary, to adapt it to the wants of this Society, shall be adopted as the regulations of the Illinois State Medical Society. A committee, appointed for the purpose, then nominated the following OFFICERS FOR 1850-1. President. Wm. B. HERRICK, Chicago. Vice Presidents. Rudolphus Rouse, Peoria. Secretaries. Edwin G. Meek, Chicago. Treasurer. John A. Halderman, Carlinville. All of whom were unanimously elected, and the Convention, by vote, resolved itself into the ILLINOIS STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY. Dr. Herrick delivered a short and appropriate address on taking the chair; and the following committees were appointed: Committee of Arrangements. J. A. McNeil, J. D. Arnold, E. S. Cooper, Peoria. Committee on Practical Medicine. Samuel Thompson, Albion. A. G. Henry, Springfield. Daniel Stahl, Quincy. Committee on Surgery. Daniel Brainard, Chicago. John A. Halderman, Carlinville. E. S. Cooper, Peoria. Committee on Obstetrics. John Evans, Chicago. Rudolphus Rouse, Peoria. M. Helm, Springfield. Committee on Drugs and Medicines. J. V. Z. Blaney, Chicago. Edward R. Roe, Jacksonville. B. K. Hart, Alton. Committee on Publication. Edwin G. Meek, Chicago. S. A. Paddock, Princeton. The Society then adopted the Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association, with but one unimportant explanatory alteration; and the following CONSTITUTION. WHEREAS, the Medical Convention held in the City of Springfield, in June, 1850, have declared it expedient "for the Medical Convention of the State of Illinois, to institute a State Medical Society;" and Inasmuch as an institution so conducted as to give frequent, united, and emphatic express |