[Transcriber's notes]
This is derived from the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/essaysinpastora00walsgoog
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book.
Obvious spelling errors have been corrected but "inventive" and inconsistent spelling is left unchanged.
[End Transcriber's notes]
{iii}
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1906
{iv}
Copyright, 1906
By Longmans, Green, and Co.
All rights reserved.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
{v}
The term Pastoral Medicine is somewhat difficult to define because itcomprises unrelated material ranging from disinfection to foeticide.It presents that part of medicine which is of import to a pastor inhis cure, and those divisions of ethics and moral theology whichconcern a physician in his practice. It sets forth facts andprinciples whereby the physician himself or his pastor may direct theoperator's conscience whenever medicine takes on a moral quality, andit also explains to the pastor, who must often minister to a minddiseased, certain medical truths which will soften harsh judgments,and other facts, which may be indifferent morally but which assist himin the proper conduct of his work, especially as an educator. Pastoralmedicine is not to be confused with the code of rules commonly calledmedical ethics.
The material of pastoral medicine requires constantly reneweddiscussion, because medicine in general is progressive enoughfrequently to devise better methods of diagnosis and treatment, andthus the postulates of the moral questions involved are changed. Thisdiscussion, however, is not easily made. The facts upon which theethical part of pastoral medicine rests are furnished by the physicianfor the consideration and judgment of the moralist—the physicianeducated after modern methods knows little or nothing of ethics andcan not himself make accurate moral decisions. The moralist, on theother hand, is commonly a poor counsellor to the physician, becauselong training in medicine is needed before the physical data of themoral decisions is comprehended. The physician, therefore, is at aloss to determine what he may or may not do in {vi} cases that involvethe greatest moral responsibility, and the priest is a hesitatingguide because the moral theologies do not convincingly present thedoctrine in these cases.
Now and then such subjects have been proposed for discussion to agroup of physicians and moralists, but usually no practical conclusionhas been reached because one side did not understand the other. In1898 there was a series of articles on ectopic gestation in theAmerican Ecclesiastical Review, in which moralists like Lehmkuhl,Sabetti, Aertnys, and Holaind, and some of the leading gynaecologistsof America considered the questions but arrived at no decision. Thephysicians did not understand certain questions, other questions wereon obsolete medical practice, essential questions were omitted, an