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11
the panel doctor, but they had nearly got to the sensible Chinese
system of paying the doctor when in health and ceasing payment
when ill. There was no reason why doctors should live on other
men's diseases. Instead, let them be handsomely paid for keeping
people well. It would be possible to double the incomes of the
doctors if they would halve their sickness, and there might come
a time when their rate of remuneration would be in direct ratio
to the fewness of their calls."
An article also in one of the monthly reviews dealing with
this question points out that the profession are more interested
in illness than in health, and though many of them are admirable,
directly we are their " patients," and are definitely ill, preferably
in bed, it is not among their recognised functions to keep the
community fit. The familiar tag " Prevention is better than
cure " makes little appeal to Medicine. Prevention is none of
its business. Cure is. The urgent need is, however, research
into the causes of such epidemics as Influenza and Foot-and-Mouth
Disease. Unfortunately, research appeals neither to British
Governments nor to the British Public, who in their wastefulness
are prepared to regard slaughter as the single solution of the
cattle plague, while Influenza is treated as one of the inevitable
ills to which the flesh is heir that we must learn to grin and
bear.
From a consideration of these remarks it would appear
that this question being taken up as it is, by the lay as well as
medical people, will undoubtedly become one of the factors of
practical medical politics at no distant date, and as I have already
indicated, in my opinion, on more grounds than one, the sooner
the better.