THE DOCTOR

Hokitika Guardian, 14 July 1927, Page 1

THE DOCTOR

Dr \V. A. Fairclough broadcasted a good word or .so about medical men on Tuesday, says the Auckland Star. Said in effect that if your hoy exhibited symptoms of a desire to belong to the profession to ii.Tk him to ponder. Average earnings of an average doctor iM .0 a year. The doctor man represents mure near |y than anybody else perpetual motion. He’s got an industrial union which clues everything possible to make his calling sacred except to define his hours. !f a. navvy worked doctor’s hours he Would rightly throw- down his shovel mid air his grievance fluently. The average citizen with a dog-ear doctor’s bill in his pocket will pass the medico's lum.se a hundred and fifty times without looking at it. When he (Or his) ate sick he can't get to it quick enough.. It is the most important house in the country. The doctor who can’t get his accounts in returns after a gruelling night and is rung up before bis head touches the pillow. He breakfast on a cigarette and a tabloid and dashes out. No one who earns hut five hundred a year ought to have a car. Tiie doctor must. No one with such an

income ought to live in a more or less palatial house. If the doctor lives in a shack, shack-du'oilers avoid him as they would the plague. The doctor is the chap who is there when you are hern, and he is inevitably there when you die. In ten thousand cases his knowledge robs the undertaker. There are men in Auckland patched up twenty years ago who play golf. The writer

stt-.v a chap yesterday who had it yard or two of his colon pruned .and joined

leaping ui) steps throe at a time, ami lie's !ifly-six years old. The doctor often slaves the clock round for people who keep him waiting three years for money. His job is worse than that of a lire brigade, because tires are few and illnesses many. He is often it sick man himself. Hasn’t time to get well. Some doctors have holidays once in ten years. Most of them have telephones or speaking tubes along side their pillow. Dreams of doctor’s paradise where all the patients are millionaires are disturbed by the querulous voice at the other end of the ’phone. He lia.s to assume a bedside manner even if he has been harried from daylight to midnight and after. If you are a natural horn evesdropper like the writer you will find that the commonest topic of conversation among the middle-aged (especially women) is disease and the doctor. In comparison with what the doctor said, what Mr Baldwin or Mr Churchill or Mr Holland saitl are hill the .sound of tinkling cymbals. And Dr Eairclouglt remarked that it was the finest profession on earth.