Sick paupers and their medical attendants : an exposé of the fraud inflicted on the sick poor, and the ratepayer, in the employment by poor-law medical officers of unqualified assistants / by C.H.
- Holmes, C.
- Date:
- 1878
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Sick paupers and their medical attendants : an exposé of the fraud inflicted on the sick poor, and the ratepayer, in the employment by poor-law medical officers of unqualified assistants / by C.H. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![both on the Patient and the Ratepayer, because it may reasonably be assumed that recovery would take place more quickly under skilled advice, than with hap-hazard treatment, and that work would be resumed and Parish allowance cease in many cases some weeks earlier than it now does.” “ So much importance does the Local Government Board attach to this question, that they do not permit Medical Officers to depute their duties to assistants, whether qualified* or not; yet such is the laxity of duty on the part of the Local Govern- ment Inspectors, that they allow—as happens in a case within my own knowledge—a Medical man to hold his appointment, although he has not performed any part of -his duties for some years.”—Correspondent of English Labourers’ Chronicle. “ When it is considered that anxiety, deprivation, and ruin fall on the poor man, and heavy charges fall on the Rates, where long continued illness occurs, it is difficult to understand how Guardians can shut their eyes to the wrong doings of their Officers. In the case of Farmers, they may be deterred from interference by the higher social position of the Doctors, or even in some cases by their having no receipts for their last year’s bill; but the Clergy are well represented at most Boards of Guardians, and no such influences can exist in their case; yet if any Board of Guardians allowed their Chaplain, to depute his duties to a person who had not been ordained, they would raise one universal howl from Land’s End to John O’Groats.”— Correspondent of English Labourers’ Chronicle. tf, as sometimes happens, a member of that community which styles itself a “ Peculiar People,” loses a child by disease, without having obtained skilled medical assistance—that is, the attendance of a legally qualified Medical Practitioner—he is deemed to have committed an offence punishable by law, and is compelled to undergo a trial before a jury; when, if he has the good fortune to escape an adverse verdict, and ,a long term of imprisonment, he is seriously admonished by the Judge, and told that his plea of having done all that to him seemed best for the restoration to health of his deceased offspring, is insufficient, and that it was his duty to call for the aid of an * “ The Board do not permit Medical Officers appointed under their regulations to depute their duties to Assistants, whether qualified or not.”— Letter of Local Government Board.—[C.H.] “ Every District, and Workhouse, Medical Officer, under the Local Govern- ment Board, has a deputy (substitute ?) duly appointed. He alone is recognised by the Board, and Unqualified Assistants cannot be legally employed.”—Lancet, 4th May, 1878.—[C.H.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2235007x_0009.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
