DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE
SIR,--Quoodle's tribute to Dr. Ian MacQueen (Spectator's Notebook,' June 26) struck just the right note. We do hold the medical man in the high- est possible regard. It is all the more unfortunate, therefore, that the title 'Doctor' is so loosely applied. Public life is littered with doctors: Dollfuss,
Gocbbels, Adenauer, Castro, Sukarno, Billy Graham, Beeching---to name only a few. And in our diploma- ridden society where the preparation and acceptance of an obscure thesis which hardly ever serves any useful purpose and is henceforth filed away and forgotten entitles an honours graduate to use the title 'Doctor' for the rest of his life, the prefix it becoming meaningless.
The only real doctor is the person who is able to respond to the call: 'Is there a doctor in the house?' Yet the supreme irony of it all is that a fully qualified medical man may not, in the matter of degrees, be a 'Doctor.' Is it too late to legislate that the honourable title of doctor be confined strictly to the medical profession?
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