As to what is ordinary or reasonable skill or care, the rule has sometimes been laid down thus favourably, “The least amount of skill with which a fair proportion of the practitioners of a given locality are endowed, is to be taken as the criterion by which to judge the physician’s skill or ability” [128]. Or, as another writer puts it, “It has been finally determined to consider the least amount of skill compatible with a scientific knowledge of the healing art as sufficient to predicate the existence of ordinary skill” [129]. To render a medical man liable even civilly for negligence, or want of due care or skill, it is not enough that there has been a less degree of skill than some other medical man may have shown, or a less degree of care than even he himself might have bestowed, nor is it enough that he himself acknowledges some degree of want of care; there must have been a want of competent and ordinary care and skill, and to such a degree as to have led to a bad result [130]. In a city there are many means of professional culture which are inaccessible in the country. Hospitals can be walked, libraries visited, new books and appliances bought, |60| constant intercourse had with the greater lights of the profession. What is due diligence, therefore, in the city, is not due diligence in the country; and what is due diligence in the country is not due diligence in the city. Hence, the question, in each particular case, is to be determined, not by enquiring what would be the average diligence or skill of the profession (which would be a thing very difficult to reach), but what would be the diligence or skill of an honest, intelligent and responsible practitioner in the position in which the one in question was placed [131].