The Physician ’s Responsibility

The recent decision of the Supreme Court of Nebraska, abstracted in the Medicolegal department of The Journal last week, is of importance and interest to practicing physicians, and especially to health officers …. The plaintiff, while stopping at a small hotel, consulted a local physician, the defendant, regarding some sores that had appeared on his body. After an examination, the physician told the plaintiff—his patient—that he believed the disease to be syphilis, but that it was impossible to make a positive diagnosis without a Wassermann test, for which he had no equipment. The defendant physician was also the physician of the hotel, and the family medical adviser of the owner. He told the plaintiff that there was danger of communicating the disease to others in the hotel and asked him to le ave the hotel the next day, which the plaintiff promised to do. On the following day, the physician … learned that the plaintiff was still there. He thereupon warned the manager’s wife that he thought the plaintiff was afflicted with a contagious disease, and advised her to use special precautio ns to avoid infection. As a result of this warning, the plaintiff was forced to leave the hotel. He consulted a physician in another town, who, after a … test had been made, was unable to say whether the plaintiff had syphilis or not. The plaintiff, thereupon, brought suit against the physician, c laiming damages on the ground that he had been injured by a disclosure of a confidenti...
Source: JAMA - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research