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Christmas morning, and although snow was falling and the atmosphere was terribly raw, his wife left the house in search of a doctor. The nearest practitioner declined to leave the house without being paid his fee; a second imposed the same condition, and the woman then went to the police station. As the horse ambulance was out, they could not help her, and she tried other doctors. In all the poor woman called on eight, and the only one who did not decline to get up without his fee was down with influenza. Eventually a local chemist was persuaded to see the man, and he ordered his removal to the hospital." That is the story. You note the charge of "inhumanity" in the very first line, and in much subsequent press comment there was the same note. Apparently every one expects a doctor to be ready at any point in the day or night to attend anybody for nothing. Most Socialists are disposed to agree with the spirit of that expectation. A practising doctor should be in lifelong perpetual war against pain and disease, just as a campaigning soldier is continually alert and serving. But existing conditions will not permit that. Existing conditions require the doctor to get his fee at any cost; if he goes about doing work for nothing, they punish him with shabbiness and incapacitating need, they forbid his marriage or doom his wife and children to poverty and unhappiness. A doctor _must_ make money whatever else he does or does not do; he _must_ secure his fees. He is a private adventurer, competing in a crowded market for gain, and keeping his energies perforce for those who can pay best for them. To expect him to behave like a public servant whose income and outlook are secure, or like a priest whose church will never let him want or starve, is ridiculous. If you put him on a footing with the greengrocer and coal merchant, you must expect him to behave like a tradesman. Why should the press blame the poor doctor of a poor neighbourhood because a moneyless man goes short of medical attendance, when it does not for one moment blame Mr. J. D. Rockefeller because a poor man goes short of oil, or the Duke of Devonshire because tramps need lodgings in Eastbourne? One never reads this sort of paragraph:-- "A case of commercial inhumanity is reported from Birmingham. A poor man named Tompkins was seriously hungry early on Christmas morning, and although snow was falling and th
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