A new scheme for the payment of medical men by the state, for free medical and surgical attendance for the public (not paupers) / by Frederick Henry Alderson.

Date:
[1893?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new scheme for the payment of medical men by the state, for free medical and surgical attendance for the public (not paupers) / by Frederick Henry Alderson. 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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    were in the Provident Dispensary, 4,000 were hospital patients, 2,000 Poor-law patients, and about 10,000 in various clubs, leaving only 10,000 for the twenty-three private practitioners. I have seen it mentioned more than once that one-third of the population of London receives, through its hospitals and other charities, gratuitous medical reh'ef. From a published report I find 26,089 patients were relieved last year at the West London Hospital; the popu- lation of Hammersmith is 100,000. It is true that many of this number came from out-lying districts, but then a great many who reside in Hammersmith go to St. George's, St. Mary's, and other hospitals, so that the average is not materially altered. The principle, too, of making medical provision free of charge has been virtually admitted and practised by Govern- ment now for some years in cases of infectious diseases as diphtheria, fevers, small-pox, and cholera, and has I think taught all classes to depend less on self and more on State aid in the emergency of sickness, and the comparatively rich and well-to-do have accepted very readily and thankfully without complaining gratuitous medical relief, and free board and residence when themselves or their children may have contracted scarlatina or other infectious disease. I think most of us present to-day have had some of our good paying patients removed from our care and treatment to the fever and other hospitals when suffering from an infectious disease. It would have doubtless surprised some of them to have been told they had been the recipients virtually of pauper relief In an article in the Lancet^ October 21st, we are told, When the first regulations were made for the public reception into hospitals for these infectious diseases, it was contemplated that only the poor and the needy classes would avail themselves of the provision, such patients as were in fact chargeable to the union or parishes in the metropolis, and it was with this restriction that the first provision was designed, and under later legislation, when it was found that other classes largely availed themselves of hospital treatment, and board and lodgings when afflicted with infectious disease, expenses were recoverable as a debt from the patient by the Board of Guardians of his union ; but under still later legislation the patient or his relations