Volume 1

International studies on the relation between the private & official practice of medicine with special reference to the prevention of disease / conducted for the Milbank Memorial Fund by Sir Arthur Newsholme.

  • Newsholme, Arthur, Sir, 1857-1943.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: International studies on the relation between the private & official practice of medicine with special reference to the prevention of disease / conducted for the Milbank Memorial Fund by Sir Arthur Newsholme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    physicians engaged in public health work, but specifically in showing how the co-operative services of private physicians may be utilised to the highest advantage by public authorities. Such problems have arisen whenever preventive medi- cine has become in part clinical in character. In various countries medical treatment of the poorer members of the community is provided apart from private medical practice: 1. By the Poor Law authorities, for the destitute; 2. By voluntary organisations, in hospitals, dispensaries, and similar institutions, for those who are destitute in the sense of not being able to pay for specially skilled help; 3. Under public insurance schemes, which may be limited to medical aid or may also give financial assistance, and in which the State and the employer are, or may be, partially responsible, as well as the beneficiary; 4. By public health authorities, given at the expense of the taxpayer, as, for instance, in fever and smallpox hospitals and in sanatoria for tuberculosis, in venereal disease clinics, and to a smaller extent in maternity and infant consultation centres; and 5. By school or public health authorities in school clinics, at which eye defects, skin complaints, adenoids and tonsils, dental caries and other defects, are treated either gratui- tously or at a small cost proportionate to the resources of the patient. In different countries the activities under these and allied headings vary enormously. The public increasingly realises that each member of the community must have prompt and adequate medical care. By this means protraction of illness can be avoided, which in itself is a great public health gain; subsequent crops of such diseases as tuber- culosis and the venereal diseases can be prevented; and the general standard of health and efficiency of the community can be raised. As public health becomes more advanced and personal hygiene forms an increasing part of it, the stimulus to provide medical services either through voluntary or official organisations increases, and the delicacy of the relation