Medical reform a public question, or, How to save twenty thousand lives per annum without putting the country to a farthing's expense / by a physician.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical reform a public question, or, How to save twenty thousand lives per annum without putting the country to a farthing's expense / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    sending for the doctor; the affectionate wife says Yes, and I'll live on bread and water to pay him ; the prudent husband replies, No, it will ruin us ; I must try something else. He crawls to the druggist, who gives him the best remedy which total ignorance of disease can suggest; or he obtains some worse than useless quack's nostrum, and, after trying it two or three days, finds his case desperate. The question now is, Your money or your life. Mr. Y. Z. is sent for ; he comes, pronounces it too late and the patient dies. His treatment would have saved that life had not the fear of his charges deterred the patient from sending for him; yet Mr. Y. Z. is a kind and skilful man, who does everything according to the usage of the pro- fession; and so, in performing his last duty to deceased, which is to fill up a certificate of cause of death, he writes, Died of acute pneumonia, instead of, Killed by the fear of a surgeon- apothecary's bill. So much for the usages of the profession, which render it superfluous to illustrate further the working of the apothecaries' system, by describing the wretchedness into which the loss of a father and husband would plunge the unfortunate family of which he was the sole stay and support. The case is one of many thousands, continually occurring; and when we consider the children lost from this