Historically, in this country, the lawyer has also borne a
great part in the making and administering of our institutions of
government. If, as some of us think, the ethical code of that
profession needs to be somewhat revised in view of present-day
conditions, and needs also to be more sternly applied to some of the
members of the profession, it is true, none the less, that there
clearly belongs to this great calling a series of duties of a public
nature, some of them imposed by the laws of the land, and others
inherent in the very nature of the occupation itself.

It is true in an even more marked and undeniable fashion that the
profession of medicine, by virtue of its public and social aspects, is
distinguished in a marked way from a calling in life in which a man
might feel that what he did was strictly his own business, subject to
nobody's scrutiny, or inquiry, or interference. The physician's public
obligation is in part prescribed by the laws of the State which
regulate medical practice, and in very large part by the professional
codes which have been evolved by the profession itself for its own
guidance. It is not the amount of his fee that the overworked doctor is
thinking about when he risks his own health in response to night calls,
or when he devotes himself to some especially painful or difficult
case. Nor is it a mere consideration of his possible earnings that
would deter him from seeking comfort and safety by taking his family to
Europe at a time when an epidemic had broken out in his own
neighborhood.

I need not allude to the unselfish devotion to the good of the
community that in so high a degree marks the lives of most of the
members of the clerical profession, for this is evident to all
observant persons.

On the other hand, it cannot be too clearly perceived that there is
nothing in the disinterestedness, and in the obligation to render
public service characterizing professional life that amounts to
unnatural self-denial or painful renunciation,--unless in some extreme
and individual cases. On the contrary, professional life at its best
offers a great advantage in so far as it permits a man to think first
of the work he is doing and the social service he is rendering, rather
than of pecuniary reward. I have myself on more than one occasion
pointed out to young men the greater prospect for happiness in life
that comes with the choice of a calling in which the work itself
primarily focuses the a