A CROWDED PROFESSION

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 177, 14 April 1923, Page 8

A CROWDED PROFESSION

PUBLIC BODIES AND WOMEN DOCTORS. The gloomy vaticinations (says the “Medical World”) of those who see an unpleasant, overcrowding of the profession in two, or at most, three, years’ time, seem to have attracted the attention of the public in an unusual degree. Many newspapers have reproduced the statistical tables and calculations from the professional journals, which go to prove there will be very soon one registered practitioner to every thousand of the general population if, indeed, we have not reached that point already. It is unfortunate that the decrease in the number of new students did not commence in time to affect the number of those who are already getting qualified and registered, as it may take the best part of a generation to reduce the number .of the surplus by the usual eliminative processes, and. in the meanwhile, there is likely to tie an exceedingly hard time for those faced with the problem of making a livelihood under the keenest competition. It is probable, too. that some of the licensing corporations may share eventually in the leanness of the times, for, amid a glut of candidates, public bodies are certain to restrict their favours to those who hold the qualifications whioh carry the greatest appeal to the lay comprehension. Tlie situation can but have a very adverse influence on the prospects of medical women ; there are far too many of them at present, and since no friendly warnings availed to check the recent inexplicable crowding of the sex into the profession, they are likely to suffer far more than the medical man in the struggle for existence. For a section of the public, and especially some corporations, still decline ; obstinately. to accept the existence of the medical woman as anything but an impertinence, and it is probable that when in competition with the male overplus she may be ousted even from her recently conquered school clinic and welfare domain.