The Mutual Responsibiilties of Physicians and the Community

The Mutual Responsibilities of Physicians and the Community is an address by Henry Philip Tappan (1805-1881), the American philosopher and educational reformer who served as the first president of the University of Michigan from 1852 to 1863. Tappan was trained as a Presbyterian minister and taught philosophy in New York before being called to Ann Arbor to remake Michigan on the German university model, with graduate education, an observatory, and the elective curriculum. The address treats the relations between the medical profession and the wider public, arguing for both professional standards and civic responsibility on the part of physicians. The piece reflects Tappan’s broader programme of professionalising American higher education in the years before the Civil War. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.