So it is actionable to say of a surgeon and accoucheur, “He is a bad character; none of the medical men here will meet him.” As such words impart the want of a necessary qualification for a surgeon in the ordinary discharge of his professional duties; or, “Dr. Tweedie has honorably and faithfully discharged his duties to his |132| medical brethren in refusing to act or consult with Ramadge (a physician), and we hope every one else will do the same” [348]. Or to call a practising medical man “a quack,” “a quacksalver,” “an empiric,” or “a mountebank,” or to say of him, “Thou gavest physic which thou knewest to be contrary to the disease,” or “Thou art no good subject, for thou poisonedst A. F.’s wound, to get more money of him.” Under the New York Statutes, a homœopathic physician may maintain an action for being called a quack [349]. And it seems that an action will lie, without averment of special damages, for slander imputing to a physician, that he has taken advantage of his character as a physician to abuse the confidence reposed in him, and commit acts of criminal conversation with a patient [350]. In the case of libel, any words will be presumed defamatory which expose the plaintiff to hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy, which tend to injure him in his professional trade, or cause him to be shunned or avoided by his neighbours. Thus, to advertise falsely that certain quack medicines, “consumption pills,” were prepared by a physician of eminence, is a libel upon such physician [351]. Whenever a medical man brings forward some new method of treatment and advertises it largely as the best, or only cure for some particular disease, or for all diseases at once, he may be said to invite public attention, and a newspaper writer is justified in warning the public against such advertisers, and in exposing the absurdity of their professions, provided he does so fairly and with reasonable judgment [352]. |133| A medical man, who had obtained a diploma and the degree of M.D., from an American College, advertised in England most extensively a new and infallible cure for consumption. The _Pall Mall Gazette_ published a leading article on these advertisements, in which they called the advertiser a quack and an impostor, and compared him to scoundrels “who pass bad coin.” This was considered as overstepping the limits of fair criticism, and a verdict was given for the plaintiff, with damages, one farthing [353]. So where the editor of the _Lancet_ attacked the editor of a rival paper, _The London Medical and Physical Journal_, by rancorous aspersions on his private character, not fairly called for by what the plaintiff had done as an editor, the plaintiff recovered a verdict of £5 [354].