Hovels
Sir: In his piece on welfare dependency (3 October) Dr Daniels paints a depressing picture all too familiar to dozens of his fellow doctors. In my grandfather's medic- al diaries I read much the same thing for 1890-1900 — and that was a semi-rural community. They are all there, the catato- nic woman, the slattern, the mad son and the urinous corridors.
Societies seem to produce some five to ten per cent more bodies than are needed and every heap has a base larger than its apex. How much worse is it in a post- industrial society wherein the very machine that keeps us all alive is becoming in- creasingly self-replicating? How can we prove that the Welfare State is a cause and not a palliative which arrived in the nick of time to prevent far greater social unrest than we see now?
Dr Daniels worries me not a little with his equation of 'politeness' with worth or need: the patient as 'supplicant' not fellow citizen! I cannot say how I would react to the well-heeled outsider if I lived an entirely empty and purposeless life in a festering hovel with no chance of escape. Hugh J. Davies 1 Arvon Road,
London NS
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