Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/391

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

340 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i t 1899

odicals ; the daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly journals are to a large extent supported by advertisers who display in type the goods offered for sale, but the journals themselves are introduced to the public by the publication of news and the discussion of current topics, all of which arc desired by the people.

MEDICINE

We have now to consider an industry which is designed to secure welfare for mankind in preventing, alleviating, and curing the diseases or other injuries to which men are subject. This industry is founded on the importance of securing the best opinions of men especially trained in the learning which pertains to sanitation and the remedies which are discovered to allevi- ate and cure diseases; it is especially an industry of opinions. Formerly this feature of the industry was somewhat masked by the more or less constant habit of medical men to furnish the medicines and appliances which they use, and to charge for the same rather than for their opinions. But an industry has been differentiated from medicine proper and is relegated to the apothecary who supplies, as merchandise, the medicines and appliances, and the merchant obtains them from manufacturers who produce constructions and substances.

Here we have to note a peculiar habit of language by which the industry of medicine is called a profession. It will be observed that those persons who engage in the highest form of esthetic art, which we have called the fine-arts, and who make a business of producing kinds of pleasure for others, are called professionals. In general, a professional is one who claims to be such an expert in his industry that he can command welfare for himself by the production of an esthetic commodity. We might stop here to show how the lawyer or the judge is also called a professional, but it will be sufficient for us to notice that the term is applied in common usage to denote a high degree of excellence in an industry, and that it usually pertains to those

��� �