Now! Then! Clifford Allbutt, supporting George Bernard Shaw’s proposal that medicine be socialised, gives a Yorkshire example of a physician drawn by vocation, not money

16 February 1909: Clifford Allbutt, supporting George Bernard Shaw’s proposal that medicine be socialised, gives a Yorkshire example of a physician drawn by vocation, not money

Lancet. 1909/02/27. Medico-legal Society Get it:

Excerpt

As to revelling in epidemics, he did not attach much weight to the expression, but he thought he ought to say that he had known one exceedingly able doctor in one of the Yorkshire dales who had a practice worth £1200 to £1400 a year. He had had to contend with an epidemic of typhoid fever and he had set himself day and night to deal with the matter and it had broken his sleep and health. In 20 years he had succeeded in eradicating that disease and the result was that he broke himself down and reduced his practice to £700 a year, at which figure his widow had had to sell it. That was the kind of revelling in epidemics which he thought was very common in the medical profession. He thought that it was a good thing that they had been led to realise that night, that under whatever flag it might be, the position was a very unsatisfactory one, and he admitted that it did want some such entire transformation as that which Mr. Shaw had sketched out.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Original

Sir T. CLIFFORD ALLBUTT said that he did not think it would pain Mr. Shaw much to say that they – most of them – agreed with very much that he had said. They all had their own trademarks. Mr. Shaw had the trademark of socialism. The names of those things did not much matter; it was the things themselves they were concerned about. He thought that there was a great deal of difference between competition. in trade and competition in a profession. If a man said “I sell a better soap than my neighbour” the ordinary person could find out readily whether it was better or not. But when it came to advertising that “I, Jones, am a better man than B or C,” that was a very different kind of competition. He thought that they could not put the two things together, because in the case of a doctor the public could not find. out, perhaps, whether they were in the hands of a skilful or an unskilful man. As to revelling in epidemics, he did not attach much weight to the expression, but he thought he ought to say that he had known one exceedingly able doctor in one of the Yorkshire dales who had a practice worth £1200 to £1400 a year. He had had to contend with an epidemic of typhoid fever and he had set himself day and night to deal with the matter and it had broken his sleep and health. In 20 years he had succeeded in eradicating that disease and the result was that he broke himself down and reduced his practice to £700 a year, at which figure his widow had had to sell it. That was the kind of revelling in epidemics which he thought was very common in the medical profession. He thought that it was a good thing that they had been led to realise that night, that under whatever flag it might be, the position was a very unsatisfactory one, and he admitted that it did want some such entire transformation as that which Mr. Shaw had sketched out.

349 words.