MEDICAL SERVICE FREE.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 March 1918, Page 8

MEDICAL SERVICE FREE.

N T EW ERA IN BRITISH NATIONAL HYGIENE,

FAR-KEACHTNG .SCHEME FORE. SHADOWED.

l)r Addition, 'Minister of Reconstruction, lias been oil'ered and has accepted the post of Minister of Public Health, says Hie Daily Express. The salary will be that of a Secretary of State, £SOOO a year He hopes to carry a Bill through Parliament before Christmas for tlie formatin of the new! Mir.|istrv. The scheme is of a farroa.diing and revolutionary character, and will throw the whole melting-pot. The new Minister of, Public Health will dominate and overshadow the Local Government Board, whose powers hereafter will be greatly diminished, and will aim at nothing less v than the nationalisation of the medical profession, involving free medical attendance for all without any element of charity. An immediate consequence foreshadowed by doctors is that little of the present system can survive, except, perhaps, that a few independent consulting physicians in extensive and lucrative practice may continue their independence for a time. Many problems will have to be fared and overcome, but the Government is undismayed by either political or professional opposition. The Prime Minister believes that the time is ripe for the change, when nobody should be prevented or deterred on the score of cost or charity from obtaining the best medical attendance. It is believed that the Government will obtain a large measure of support for the scheme among Mr. Asquith's followers, who will view the new Ministry on humanitarian, as opposed to party, lines. The medical profession will be strongly 1 divided. On one hand it will be contended that a State medical system kills individual effort in the profession, and tends to arrest development and medical and surgical science. On the other hand, the fact that it guarantees a competence and !» lien-ion to all medical men may commend the schema to thousands. His friends say Lord Rliondda will feel some disappointment at his scheme passing into other hands.

GREAT REFORMS IMPENDING. Judge Parry makes an important con(ri'ution to the question of public health refi.-m through the columns of the Daily Chronicle. He writes:—''Many of the old ino'.hods of dealing with disease will have Io be scrapped. The first step to be Inken is well understood. There must lie a Minister of Health. The various powers relating to public health in the hands of health insurance', poor law, sanilary, education, and "-other authorities must be grouped together in one new Hepariment—the Ministry of Health. 'Fifty years ago our governors and rulers -were perfectly happy in their minds about the duty of the State towards the sick poor. Doubtless the> did not dispute that it was a Christian idea 'to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease,' but they waited patiently for the business to be' brought about by miracles, and were sufficient!) pious not to make any sustained effort to irterfere with the matter themselves. '•To this end any relief of the sick poor was rendered a s grudgingly as could be. The State ideal was the negative of the Christian ideal.- 'Medical relief was only to be provided for such persons 'as could properly be deemed paupers,' and the Poor Law Commission of IS-IU laid down the principle that the rules and practice relating to the treatment of Ihe sick poor should be drafted with a view to •withdraw from the laboring Hastes, the administrators of relief, and the medical oiiic;crs all motives for applying for or administering medical relief unless where the circumstances render it absolutely nceessurv.'

FIGHTING DISEASE.

"Alrady we have school clinics, health visitors, tuberculosis ollicers, and are beginning to recognise that it is unwise to wait until wo are attacked by disease before Ave make any eil'orts to prevent its spreading, but in the New Utopia we must greatly enlarge our responsibilities, and have a national medical service with powers to seek out disease and combat it in its earliest stages.

"A real national health service will not be cil'ectivo without a system of national hospitals equipped and stafl'c-d at least as well as the best modern voluntary hospital. In saying this one ought, perhaps, to add that the country owes a great debt to the older hospitals, and that no'interference should be permitted with their endowments or management. In order to establish universities in Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham it was not ::eeessury to disestablish Oxford and Cambridge. In the same way St. Bartholomew's and the Manchester Royal-In-firmary, and many other hospitals may ivell be left untouched, as examples to emulate.

"Over and above the institution of a national medical and hospital service we shall have to give the Minister of Health power to enforce some of his decrees, if .certain diseases arc to be stamped out of our midst. A nation that has welcomed compulsory education, and put itself un. der compulsory military service, cannot raise- any serious objection to compulsory hea'th. At present 11 per cent, of the deaths, or I in 0, are due to tuberculosis, and our natiyval annua! death roll from this plague runs up to 75,000. As fains a layman can understand the mattei-, it seems clear that our present methods of cure, though they may prevent much suffering, will not abolish the disease. '•The Ministry of Health in this—and, perhaps, in other diseases—ought; to have the power to enforce a reasonable men.' ■sure of separation against tknserous and infective persons. One is not allowed today to travel abroad with small-pox or scarlet fever, and locking at the terrible suffering and economic waste caused by tuberculosis, once it is agreed that, the segregation of consumptive infectives would be in the interests of public health, mere sentiment and sympathy should not hinder us from making the experiment."