URGENT NEED FOR DOCTORS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1670, 3 February 1917, Page 4

URGENT NEED FOR DOCTORS.

The Lancet made a significant statement last month, that “it is clear that there must come a day, if the war is indefinitely prolonged, when the necessary economy of medical men can only be attained by the mobilisation of the whole of the available supply.” That day, it is urged, is certainly drawing near. Sir Donald Mac Alister, chairman of the General Medical Council, recently announcer) that the War Office would gladly engage “4,000 doctors to-morrow” if they were available. Yet, in some cases, there are at the present time the same number of doctors as there were* before the war, while in others the medical element has almost disappeared. Again, the war doctors, who left everything to serve their country, have in many instances lost their practices, and a bitter feeling has been engendered in consequence. Archbishop Maguire, speaking in Glasgow, referred to the hard lot of doctors, many of whom were shockingly overworked. He believed that before the end of the war there would be no private practitioners left and all patients would have to go to infirmaries to be treated. Three women doctors have joined the medical staff at the London Hospital, and women doctors are being given equally responsible positions in other hospitals and kindred institutions. The calls of the war have already depleted the staffs at the London hospitals, and an intimation has been conveyed to the authorities that all students, as soon as they qualify, will be drafted into the ILA.M.C. There are in London now five hospitals entirely officered by women, and women are running a military hospital in Ended Street for wounded soldiers. Women who desire to qualify for the medical profession have an excellent (raining ground at the Koval Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women, and there are medical schools open to women attached to several universities in provincial centres. But most of the medical schools attached to the London hospitals still exclude women.