Note 74 — Chapter XXVII · THE FOUNDERS OF HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

The meaning of this Latin inscription can best be appreciated by those physicians who have, through a long period of years, practiced their profession largely among the well-to-do classes of a metropolitan city. They alone, I believe, would understand the significance of “lucrum neglectum” as applied to a large proportion of the gifts which a practitioner of medicine receives from grateful patients; and it is not at all likely that a layman who is not familiar with this aspect of a physician’s life would, under the circumstances mentioned, have the slightest suspicion that the device quoted above could possibly bear the meaning that I have given to it.