PRACTICES DWINDLING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 June 1940, Page 6

PRACTICES DWINDLING

PEOPLE “FORGET TO BE ILL” IN WAR. CHEMISTS SUFFER, TOO. Despite war-time worries fewer people are going to the doctor in Britain. An incident which points to this conclusion occurred recently. A London doctor now serving with the Forces walked into the offices of the Medical Practitioners’ Union in Russell Square to put “a serious matter” before the secretary.

“When I joined up I arranged with local colleagues to take over my private practice, which was worth £650 last year,” he said.

“They were to take 50 per cent of the war-time yield, and I was to be credited with the other 50 per cent. I have just had my cheque for the first four months of the war: It was only £l4, equivalent to just over £4O in a full year. Isn’t there sßmething wrong?”

There wasn’t. Other soldier-doctors have been made suspicious by the smallness of cheques posted to them by colleagues looking after their patients. The explanation is simple—and remarkable.. People forget their little ills and chills in wartime and doctors suffer.

“It happened in the last war.” said the secretary of the Union. “Private practices dwindled almost to nothing. And they have done the same already in this war. Evacuation and the transfer of man power into the Services are not enough to account for it. The most likely explanation is {hat war diverts people’s thoughts from themselves to the community and nation in general. They are so occupied with the war that they cannot be introspective. Chemists have suffered, too. Even the ’flu epidemic did not bring enough business to make up for the tremendous slump.”