Bruce Quinn

“Professional redemption was a first step. On that, in a cri de coeur addressed to the elite American Academy of Medicine, professor of ophthalmology and otology Leartus Connor summed up in 1898 what he and other reformers considered to be the many “diseases of the medical profession.” They included “overcrowding; a vast number of incompetents; large numbers of moral degenerates; crowds of pure tradesmen; blatant demagogues; hospitals organized and conducted to the damage of both profession, patient and people; … medical societies so conducted as to be a by-word among honest persons, and yet continued to advance the financial profit of their leaders; domination by commercial interests of drug manufacturers and proprietors of secret and proprietary medicines.”
― Peter A. Swenson, Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction, and Money in American Medicine