Poor Law Medical Officers' Association / the address delivered by Joseph Rogers.

  • Rogers, Joseph, 1821-1889.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Poor Law Medical Officers' Association / the address delivered by Joseph Rogers. 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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    the room is another door, which leads to the surgery, and from it an outside door into the street. For cases of a delicate nature, there is, on the same floor, leading out of the Physician’s room, a small consulting room, well lighted, and provided cheaply, but sufficiently, with all needful appliances. A part of the Dispensary is also set apart for the meeting of the Committee, which in town districts takes place weekly. The order of proceeding is as follows :—As the patients come in, the porter demands to see their tickets ; on their producing a new ticket he gives them a card with a date on it, which will pass them in for a fortnight or during the duration of the illness. He then ushers them in turn into the Physician’s room. If furnished with a white ticket, the nature of the illness is enquired into, their names taken down in the Deport book, a prescription given, and they go forthwith to the surgery; if a red or visiting ticket be presented, the applicant is informed when he may expect to see the doctor. The average time required for the daily performance of the duty is about two hours, with an extra hour two days in the week for vaccination. There is this advantage in the appointment of two Medical Officers to each Dispensary in densely populated districts, that if on an emergency one should be called away, the other could take up his duty and finish it for the day. There is one thing I must here notice, viz., the excessive amount of writing demanded from the urban Medical Officer, and which necessarily occupies much of the time which should be given to diagnosis and prescribing. It may be diminished as follows:—It should be a sine qua non that the porter should write; the Dispensary ticket should have a place for a number and for the name of the disease; the latter the doctor should write in, and the prescription on the back of it; the patient could then take this to the apothe- cary ; when he was gone, the porter could enter the number of the ticket and name, and the apothecary, at his leisure, could write in the prescription in the proper column. In country places, the Dispensary has a more primitive character, consisting of a reception room and a small surgery adjoining; the Medical Officer attends every or every other day, or only twice a week; sometimes he has two Dispensary stations in his district, where he attends on stated days. Not unfrequently his own house is used for the meeting place of the Dispensary Committee ; for this he obtains some small additional payment. It has been stated that Dispensaries are aU very well
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