A DOCTOR'S LIFE.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19480, 29 November 1928, Page 17

A DOCTOR'S LIFE.

ALCOHOLISM AND SUICIDE. LONELY SLUM WORKERS. (TROW OUR OWX COBBEBPONDENT.) LONDON, October 19. According to Dr. E. Graham Little, M.P., who spoke at a meeting of the Royal Institute of Public Health, the doctor's consulting-room, far from being a gold mine, is often the shortest route to the cemetery. "Alcoholism and suicide are notably frequent in doctors, compared with other classes," he said. "As compared with lawyers and with clergymen, the medical group has a much higher mortality. Two causes of death which are unhappily notably frequent in doctors as compared with other groups are alcoholism and suicide, and reasons for this selective frequency may be perhaps enquired into. The doctor, especially the doctor practising in crowded industrial- areas, is a much overworked man. He is often obliged'to force himself to the utmost to get the last ounce of his strength brought into action in an emergency, and the peg of whisky is the quickest and most effective means of getting that last ounce of energy out of himself. "The doctor also, in poorer and slum districts, is usually an isolated and lonely, as well as a tired man. He is largely cut off from fellowship with his equals. Ho cannot mix with his patients as men in better environments may do, and moderate but continuous drinking, rather than occasional excesses, constitute the worst type of alcoholism, that of the solitary or secret drinker. The drabness of life under these circumstances is again a compelling factor in producing alcoholic habits. Prevalence of Suicide. "The prevalence of suicide may perhaps be explained by a number of considerations. The doctor who thinks he is attacked by a fatal disease may yield to a temptation to end his troubles which is not present to other "persons similarly affected, and the transitory or even momentary depression of a tired man may thus precipitate a fatal issue which so simple a measure as a good night's rest would avoid. The means of terminating his existence are always at his hand in the drugs which he handles. "It is also probably true to say that the medical calling has never been so anxious a one as it is to-day. The profession is greatly overcrowded. Far from being the gold mine which popular imagination so fantastically imagines it to be, the consulting room of a doctor is much more often the shortest road to the cemetery." A Medical Critic. Dr. Alfred Cox, medical secretary to the' British Medical > Association, does-not agree. "I should not call it a drab life," he said, "I should call it the most interesting life there is. There is no drabness about it except to a man who finds himself in the wrong profession. "To my mind it is an exaggerated way of putting the position when one speaks of the doctor's consulting room being the shortest route to the cemetery. The strain on a doctor in an active practice is very great, both mentally and physically, but it must be remembered that a man cannot pursue a medical career unless he had pretty good health to begin with. "Roughly speaking, it is true that the temptation to alcohol is great in the case of the doctor on account of missed meals, irregular working hours, and so forth. And there is, of course, easy access to drags, but I am unable to say whether suicide is notably frequent in doctors. My own view is that, physically, doctors are as good as any other class. The life is a trying one, but I should not say that it is an especially easy road to the grave."