DOCTOR AND PATIENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 210, 17 June 1933, Page 8

DOCTOR AND PATIENTS

WIDOW REFUSES TO PAY. An amusing discussion, in which the parties were a judge, a doctor, a lawyer and a widow, has taken place in a Paris court. The doctor had sued the widow for the amount of his fees—about £s—as she had refused to pay, on the ground that the doctor's treatment had failed, to save her husband's life. Medical men, the widow said, should be on the same looting as most other people in regard to payment for work done. Her husband was a tailor and always accepted the principle that if a customer found his work unsatisfactory no payment should be made. The judge remarked that a great pioneer of surgery in the seventh century had replied to a grateful patient, "I can only bandage; it is God who heals."

A remark having been interjected by the widow's lawyer concerning the usefulness of medical men, the doctor asked whether, if the lawyer lost his case, he would return his fees to his client. There was a momentary silence.

The judge, in deciding against the widow, remarked that doctors were so much entitled to their fees that the law accorded a special provilege to their 'claims upon the estate of a patient who died.