THE DOCTORS' BOYCOTT. Will the Friendly Societies Back Down?

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 309, 2 June 1906, Page 6

THE DOCTORS' BOYCOTT. Will the Friendly Societies Back Down?

IT seems to our unprofessional mmd that the medical profession won't add to its dignity by making use of the weapon known as the boycott. That is the charge preferred against it at the recent Friendly Societies' Conference in Wellington. Perhaps, you may remember the circumstances. The friendly societies at Motueka wished to have the lodgemembers' medical privileges extended to their wives and families To this the lodge doctor demurred. They ended his contract with them, and a Christchurch doctor was found who was willing to subscribe to their terms. Thereupon, the Nelson branch of the Medical Association put him under the ban of the boycott by refusing to permit any of its members to consult with him. And the Nelson branch has been backed up by the executive of the Association in this colony. • • • Thisi is not the first set battle between the Medical Association and the friendly societies in New Zealand. There was a. bigger rumpus in Avickland three years ago over a similar trouble. The members there were dissatisfied with the lodge-doctor system. They had the notion that, although the average newly-fledged or newly-arrived medico was precious glad to get a footing in the community by being appointed a lodge doctor, yet, as his practice grew, he showed more and more plainly a disposition to treat the lodge patients, so to* speak, as a kind of pauper patients. Whether this notion were well or ill founded, the various friendly societies combined, established a dispensary, and imported two medical doctors at a salary of £550 each to attend solely and exclusively to fchel lodge members. Thereupon, the Medical Association retaliated with the boycott by refusing to consult with the imported doctors. In short, they were professionally ostracised. • * • Up to the present, the friendly societies in Auckland .seem to be not one whit the worse for the Association's ban. In three years they have made a profit of £1000, and are now importing a third doctor. Motueka's position is more difficult by reason of its far inferior numerical strength. The point, however, is • Why should the Medical Association use its power to prevent doctors from making these arrangements with the friendly societies? Their pay is 1 good. At Motueka. each married lodge member pays 30s a-year as medical contribution, and the bachelor members 10s ayear, whether they use the doctor or not. The aggregate sum is a handsome retainer for a new doctor anxious to establish a practice in a country district, and it is the ladder by which many a prosperous medico has raised himself to a leading position where hundred-guinea fees for operations are frequent and fashionable. • • • The thing that the Association very properly should concern itself about is the maintenance of tne status and high reputation of the pro-

fession. It should be vigilant to put down malpractice, and expose lmposters. But, to squabble with the friendly societies over a question of fees is surely very like huckstering? To interfere with the, freedom of contract between the friendly societies and doctors who are only too glad to accept the terms offered them, insuring as they do a substantial salary, reminds one very sitrongly of some of the tactics of the trade unions). And to refuse to consult with the boycotted doctors m matters of life and death raises the pertinent question whether the community at large should even tolerate such conduct. ♦ • • The medical profession enjoys many privileges. It is held in the highest esteem. Its members should be all the more careful to gang warily. The boycott is a clumsy weapon at best. Up in Auckland the doctors seems to have made a bungling use of it. They will do well not to hurt the public conscience by refusing to consult in out-of-the way places with properly qualified doctors who may lie under the ban of the Association. A single human life lost under such circumstances would quickly arouse a storm of papular indignation that might lead to the kind of legislation suggested at the recent Conference.