Two uncommon esophageal cases / Anthony Bassler.

  • Bassler, Anthony, 1874-
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Two uncommon esophageal cases / Anthony Bassler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    in Great Britain have painfully deteriorated since he and his friend Winston Churchill have come to the fore. Doubtless, were I in the old country, with certain innate conservative tendencies, I should cordially loathe him. Seen dispassionately from a distance, he appears to be that rarest of combinations, a ranting demagogue pos- sessed of constructive powers. In establishing the eye and artisan insurance, he was, it is true, only following the lead of Germany, but his insurance against sickness has followed distinctly original lines. Briefly, he said that this payment on the part of or on behalf of the artisan and his family for insurance against sickness led to other obligations. If the government made itself responsible for payment for disability, it must provide the medical attendance, must see that the sick man or woman received due care according to a definite scale; and that this must be provided by the state. Thus to-day in Great Britain there is compulsory insurance against sickness and disability for all those whose earn- ings are below a certain amount, and in return the government provides medical attendance. The medical men in any district who accept the government terms become in this way servants of the state. The worker, male or female, is given the power of selecting his' medi- cal attendant from the panel, and having selected him he is paid by the government at the rate of something- under two dollars per year per head. His interest, therefore, is to preserve the health of his clients—the less active sickness there is the better for him and for everybody. There are, I should add, special payments for drugs, maternity cases, tuberculosis, etc., which here I need not enter into. So, after a sharp and very bitter campaign, medical conditions in Great Britain have been revolutionized. What must impress those who have followed the fight put up by the profession is that our brothers across the water were not opposed to the principle of Lloyd George’s measure; on the contrary, they were ready to admit it. What aroused their fury was the way in which the bill was introduced; the way in which they, brought up to glory in their professional independence, were forced to convert themselves into public servants without so much as a polite “by your leave”; were told what should be the registration fee without consulta- tion. To modify slightly an old saying, it was not what Lloyd George did, but the nasty way in which he did