Gregory's Lectures on the Duties of a Physician

John Gregory (1724 to 1773), the son of an Aberdeen professor of medicine, studied medicine at Edinburgh and Leiden and took his doctorate from King's College, Aberdeen, in 1745. He taught philosophy there, was one of the first surgeons to operate at the Aberdeen Infirmary, lectured to midwives, and in 1754 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1766 he became professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

He gave lectures on the duties and qualifications of a physician at Edinburgh between 1767 and 1769. Students copied them, and one transcript found its way into print in what Gregory called a negligent form. He revised the text and published it in London in 1772, addressed to young students of medicine. The lectures took up in turn the temper and understanding that fit a person to practice, the moral qualities expected of a physician, the proper conduct toward patients, colleagues, surgeons and apothecaries, and the education a physician needed.

The chief moral quality, Gregory wrote, was humanity, the sensibility of heart that makes us feel for the distress of others and moves us to relieve it. Sympathy won a patient's affection and confidence, which in many cases mattered greatly to recovery. A gentle and compassionate physician's visit was welcome, while an unfeeling and rough one made the patient's heart sink. He named patience, attention, discretion, secrecy and honor among a physician's obligations, and stressed secrecy where the characters of individuals and the credit of families were at stake.

According to the Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society, Gregory also told physicians to acknowledge and correct their mistakes and to put the patient's welfare ahead of commercial motives and status, and his writings were translated into French, German, Italian and Spanish. He died in 1773. His other widely read book, A Father's Legacy to His Daughters, was published the following year.