Baker v. Hancock

• Decision Date: 23 May 1902
• Citation: 29 Ind.App. 456,64 N.E. 38
• Parties: BAKER v. HANCOCK.
• Court: Indiana Appellate Court

29 Ind.App. 456

64 N.E. 38

BAKER

v.HANCOCK.

Appellate Court of Indiana.

May 23, 1902.

On petition for rehearing. Overruled.

For former opinion, see 63 N. E. 323.

Asa Elliott and M. B. Hottel, for appellant. W. T. Brannaman and O. H. Montgomery, for appellee.

ROBY, J.

After stating that “a physician is a physician whenever he acquires sufficient learning to be intrusted by the proper legal authorities with a legal license to practice medicine, and it is actually practiced,” the appellee's attorneys, in their brief upon this petition, inquire, “When is a specialist a specialist?” The question is not one of law; it is a question of fact. The appellee may or may not have qualified himself as a specialist. Whether he had done so was a matter within his own knowledge, and primarily for his own determination. Having arrived at the conclusion that he possessed such qualification, it still remained optional with him as to whether he would hold himself out and receive and treat patients upon the basis of it. When he determines to do this and does it, it then becomes his duty to exercise that degree of skill which he thereby represented himself as possessing. To relieve one practicing medicine under such circumstances of responsibilities commensurate with the pretension by which patients are secured and compensation fixed, would be to give ignorant practitioners license to defraud and to place innocent patients at their mercy. The definition of the noun “specialist,” as given in the Standard Dictionary, was followed in the opinion. It is said in that work to mean “more especially a physician or surgeon who applies himself to the study and practice of some particular branch of his profession.” The thing on...