THE DOCTORS' STRIKE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1548, 18 September 1912, Page 7

THE DOCTORS' STRIKE.

TROUBLE AT LEEDS. By Teiecrapli— Press Association—Ooprrlghl London, September 16. Anticipating a general medical strike in January next, the doctors at Leeds and Pudsey have resigned their contracts with friendly (societies. Eight thousand persons at Pudsey are affected. Of f his number, 6000 are paying the doctors' ordinary fees. APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC FOE MORAL SUPPORT Arising out of their recent decision to break off negotiations with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in respect to working the medical benefits of the Jnsiirance Act, the British Medical Association have issued an.explanatory statement to the public. '■ "It ■would be mere affectation to say, the statement runs, "that the profession in this struggle is not actuated to a large extent by a desire to get adequate remuneration ; but remuneration is not the only thing, or, indeed, the chief, object of the profession at this time. It feels that it is fighting for its very existence as an independent profession. It is faced by an entirely new set of circumstances, the full bearing of which nobody can yet estimate. "The Government proposes to sef up a medical service which will at once include some twelve to 'fourteen million people, a large number of whom in the past have received perfectly satisfactory medical attendance by means of arrangements made direct with their own doctor. There is every indication that in the future it will be sought to include the dependents of insured persons, and that thus the service will at no distant date include four-fifths of the whole population. It thus becomes a matter not only of professional but of national concern to ensure that' the conditions now set up should be such as will, give the public the choice of the best men at present in the profession, nnd will not tend to lower the standard of the men entering the profusion. Under the conditions nt present offered the most experienced and trusted practitioners v;ould certainly decline to serve under the Act."