DOCTORS IN DECLINE?
Sta,—You have published revealing reactions of the medical profession to the new Health Service. Will you now print a patient's point of view? Under the service scheme as it stands the doctors will belong to the nation. To judge by analogy with other recently nationalised assets, e.g., coal, they will then become scarce, dear, badly distributed, stony-hearted and may finally have to be imported. Patients are appalled at the prospect. Surely if anything in our way of life can well and safely be left un- disturbed it is the wholly admirable relationship which exists between British medical men and the sick. This relationship has stood the test of time, ignorance, poverty, wars and change, and of all intimate human contacts it is the one most universally devoid of abuse or unfair advantage. It is based on the voluntary personal pact between doctor and patient,
immune from the veto or sanction of any third force. What we patients so greatly fear is that when our doctors are transmuted into civil servants they may become, suo more, regulation-ridden, and that sick people may cease to be regarded as such and become more like fodder for form-filling. During the customary protracted process of "passed to you for Comment" the patient may well pass out unnoticed. Can nothing be done to restrain this power-thirsty interfering Government? Already their imposed hard- ships are heavy, little food and fuel, lack of roofs and raiment. Must we
take all this and Bevan too?—Yours faithfully, IsAsti.LA McRAE. Daramona, Barnton, Edinburgh.
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