The People's Health
1932-07 1932 1930s 24 pages patients' environment at home or at work to the appropriate quarter. There must be much more health propaganda by poster, lecture, and instruction in schools. Moreover, persons must be encouraged to come to their doctors for periodic examinations, even when they...
| Main Author: | |
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : The Labour Party
July 1932
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/E232F8D1-6F0F-4482-B2C9-8C6516B50E79 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/76370413-E458-4C22-894F-915185AD27D8 |
| Summary: | 1932-07
1932
1930s
24 pages
patients' environment at home or at work to the appropriate quarter. There must be much more health propaganda by poster, lecture, and instruction in schools. Moreover, persons must be encouraged to come to their doctors for periodic examinations, even when they seem to be quite well. Only in this way can doctors learn to recognise the earliest beginnings of disease. (2) The Service must be Free to All. One reason, at any rate, why people so rarely come to their doctor for a periodic examination or for information concerning the laws of health is that this costs money. There must be no economic barrier between the doctor and his patient. Efficient treatment depends on the earliest recognition of disease. The question of expense must, not therefore, be allowed to enter in at all, and rich and poor alike must be encouraged to take advantage of the services of the doctor directly they feel they need it. The medical examination of school children and of recruits for the Army has shown that under the present system of private practice an enormous amount of ill-health and physical defects remain undetected and therefore, neither prevented nor treated. The present dependence of the doctor on his patient is undesirable in many ways. It may prevent the doctor from giving wholesome but unpleasant advice ; it may prevent his refusing to sign unnecessary incapacity certificates ; it may make him more concerned about mere externals than an intimate knowledge of the science of his profession. There are many other reasons for making all the medical services entirely free. Modern methods of diagnosis and treatment are becoming constantly more complicated and elaborate and, therefore, costly. Further, not only are healthy people, who are capable of giving service by hand or brain the most important of national assets, but unhealthy people are a national danger, for infectious disease when conveyed through them is liable to increase in virulence. Lastly, experience has shown that any service arbitrarily limited to the poor is liable to become inefficient. If the Medical Service is free and all-embracing it follows of necessity that it must be staffed by full-time doctors giving the whole of their services to the State. A part-time service is impracticable because if all patients could obtain a doctor's help without payment during some part of the day, while they had to pay for the same service at another period, it seems certain that they would all consult the doctor during his free hours unless, of course, they had reason to suppose that they were obtaining better treatment when the services were not obtained gratuitously. Such conditions obviously could not be permitted, for it is clear that the State doctor must do 4
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |