[To the-Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Spt,- 7 -Miss Gertrude Kingston is mistaken
in supposing that " Another Medical Man " flies to the defence of his craft. The craft does not need the defence of my humble pen. My object in writing was to save the pcior middle class public from its friends, who, obsessed with the importance of hospitals
, and the eminent physicians and surgeons attached thereto, . fail to see that by concentrating on these institutions and
• failing to give adequate facilities to general practitionets . they will in the end add to the difficulties of medical service and but increase the need for more and ever more hospitals. No doubt under present conditions there is a crying need for . more hospital facilities, but in my opinion this is largely due to neglecting the general practitioner and thereby allowing the ambulatory- or out-patient to pass into the state for which in-patient treatment alone -suffices.
- Miss Kingston in her enthusiasm has apparent!y not considered the possibility that these medical difficulties may . have already engaged the attention of some of her critics, who have even attempted some constructive work towards . their relief. -Has she ever heard-of the Kensington Physical Treatment Centre, the development of which, you, Sir, permitted me to advocate in your columns ?
I am not at all sure that your contributor made no reflection . on the general practitioner, but if she did not, her admiration of the-eminent physicians and surgeons reminds me of the words of the late Sir William Osier, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford : " %Vomen, our greatest friends and our greatest enemies, are the chief sinners, and while one will exhaust the resources of the language in describing our mistakes and weaknesses, another will laud her pet doctor ro indiscriminately that all others come under a sort of oblique condemnation."—I am, Sir, &c., HAROLD If. SANCUINETTI.
19 Campden House Road, W. 8.
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