Sanitary economics: or, our medical charities, as they are, and as they ought to be / [Alexander Patrick Stewart].

  • Stewart, Alexander P. (Alexander Patrick), 1813-1883
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sanitary economics: or, our medical charities, as they are, and as they ought to be / [Alexander Patrick Stewart]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    chiefly with the view of introducing themselves to influential friends, and without any particular re¬ ference to the convenience of the public. And I believe that the originator of a dispensary is usually a gainer by it. Of all his successors, however, the resident officer alone is benefited, while the claims of the physicians and surgeons to any remuneration are systematically ignored. Hence the strange anomaly of two dispensaries within gunshot of each other, each with a salaried resident, and expensive house-rents, rates, and taxes, while eight or twelve physicians and surgeons, the real guardians of the interests of the patients, and of the fair name of the rival establishments, are expected to add to the prestige of the latter by toiling on the live-long year, in a state of honourable and philanthropic serfdom, with the prospect, to use a phrase more pithy than refined, of “ getting more kicks than halfpence ” for their pains. A few words on a point, regarding which much misapprehension prevails. The public imagine that this professional slavery is indirectly a source of emolument to those engaged in it, and is an excel¬ lent introduction to private practice. On the other hand, nineteen out of every twenty of those who ply this laborious calling will tell you that they were never benefited, directly or indirectly, by their connexion with a dispensary, to the extent of a single guinea. The public is pleased to think that it should be—its medical slave is often puzzled to know why it is not