HARLEY STREET INCOMES

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1640, 12 May 1925, Page 7

HARLEY STREET INCOMES

■NOT AS HIGH AS IS SUPPOSED,

Until Sir James Mackenzie appeared in the field it was supposed that the late Sir Lauder Brunton had earned the largest income ever obtained by a consulting physician in Harley .Street (states a student of medicine in the Daily Chronicle). Sir Lauder's annual receipts from practice were estimated —.popularly—at 'from £20,000 to £25,000 a year. The statement was current a few years ago that Sir James Mackenzie earned £30,000 a year "or more."

People who indulge in these estimates have little knowledge of the real facts. The professional fee for a consultation at the physician's house was, until recently (and still is in the majority of cases) £8 3s. Each consultation occupies three-quarters of an hour, and some six hours are available for work each day—excluding Saturday. This, allowing for six weeks' vacation each year, gives a total of £5520. But there remains to be added the large additional fees earned when a consultant leaves his house and goes to pay visits in the country. The usual fee is £l' Is per mile. It is reasonable to suppose that most wellknown physicians earn at least £3OOO a year in, this "additional way." Even so, the total income, does not reach £IO,OOO. As compared with the earnings of famous surgeons, this figure is contemptible.

Nor does any reason appear to exist why physicians should fare, relatively, so badly. Their work is more laborious than that of the surgeon, and demands, usually, more care and thought. Surgery is by no means the "hair-breadth" business which laymen suppose it to be. The ordinary carpenter works to about l-100th part of an inch; the ordinary surgeon to about l-10th. The truth, apparently, is that the fiction of the "life or death" operation is firmly rooted in the public mind. A man about to face the ordeal of the operating room feels that he cannot afford to take any risks. He will pay the top price whatever it may be. I do not suggest that this is a bad policy. But I do suggest that the equally hardworking, painstaking physician has a legitimate grievance.