DOCTORS’ PRACTICES

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 May 1940, Page 4

DOCTORS’ PRACTICES

PEOPLE “FORGET TO BE ILL.” LONDON, March 30. Despite war-time worries fewer people are going to the doctor in Britain. An incident which points to this conclusion occurred this week. A London doctor now serving with the Forces walked into the offices of the Medical Practitioners’ Union in Russell Square to put “a. serious matter” before the secretary. “When I joined up I arranged with! local colleagues to take over my private practice, which was worth £650, last year,” he 1 said. They were to take 50 per cent, of the war-time yield, and I was to be credited with the. other 50 per cent. I have just had my cheque for the first four months of the war. It was only £l4, equivalent to just over £4O in a full year, isn’t there something wrong?”

There wasn’t. Other soldieixloctors have been made suspicious by tfhe smallness of cheques posted to them by colleagues looking after their patients. The explanation is simple—and remarkable. People forget their little ills and chills in war-time —and doctors suffer.

“It happened in the last war,” said the secretary of the union. “Private practices dwindled almost to nothing. And they have done the same already in this war. Evacuation and the transfer of man power into the Services are not enough to account for it. The most likely explanation is that war diverts people’s thoughts from themselves to the community and nation in general. They are sb occupied with the Avar that they cannot be introspective. Chemists have suffered to. Even the ’flu epidemic did not bring enough business to make tip for the tremendous slump.” '• .