Essays in War-Time Part 5

It is sometimes said that the relation of the isolated prost.i.tute to her _souteneur_ const.i.tutes a form of "white slavery." Undoubtedly that may sometimes be the case. We are here in a confused field where the facts are complicated by a number of considerations, and where circ.u.mstances may very widely differ, for the "fancy boy"--selected from affection by the prost.i.tute herself--may easily become the _souteneur_, or "cadet" as he is termed in New York, who seduces and trains to prost.i.tution a large number of girls. The prost.i.tute is so often a little weak in character and a little defective in intelligence; she is so often regarded as a legitimate prey by the world in which she moves, and a legitimate object of contempt and oppression by the social world above her and its legal officers, that she easily becomes abjectly dependent on the man who in some degree protects her from this extortion, contempt, and oppression, even though he sometimes trains her to his own ends and exploits her professional activities for his own advantage. These circ.u.mstances so often occur that some investigators consider that they represent the general rule. No doubt they are the most conspicuous cases. But they can scarcely be regarded as representing the normal relations of the prost.i.tute to the man she is attracted to. She is earning her own living, and if she possesses a little modic.u.m of character and intelligence, she knows that she can choose her own lover and dismiss him when she so pleases. He may beat her occasionally, but all over the world this is not always displeasing to the primitively feminine woman.

"It is indeed true," as Kneeland remarks, "that many prost.i.tutes do not believe their lovers care for them unless they 'beat them up'

occasionally." The woman in this position is not more of a "white slave"

than many wives, and some husbands, who submit to the whims and tyrannies of their conjugal partners, with, indeed, the additional hardship and misfortune that they are legally bound to them. And the _souteneur_, although from the respectable point of view he has put himself into a low-down moral position, is, after all, not so very unlike those parasitic wives who, on a higher social level, live lazily on their husbands' professional earnings, and sometimes give much less than the _souteneur_ in return.

When, however, we put aside the complicated question of the prost.i.tute's relationship to the man who is her lover, protector, and "bully," we have to recognise that there really is a "White Slave Traffic," carried on in a ruthlessly business-like manner and on an international scale, with watchful agents, men and women, ever ready to detect and lure the victims. But even this too amply demonstrated fact was not found sufficiently highly spiced by the White Slave Traffic agitators. It was necessary to excite the public mind by sensational incidents. Everyone was told stories, as of incidents that had lately occurred in the next street, of innocent, refined, and well-bred girls who were s.n.a.t.c.hed away by infamous brigands beneath the eyes of their friends, to be immured in dungeons of vice and never more heard of. Such incidents, if they ever occurred, would be too bizarre to be justifiably taken into account in great social movements. But it is even doubtful whether they ever occur.

The White Slave traders are not heroes of romance, even of infamous romance; less so, indeed, than many more ordinary criminals; they are engaged in a very definite and very profitable business. They have no need to run serious risks. The world is full of girls who are over-worked, ill-paid, ignorant, weak, vain, greedy, lazy, or even only afflicted with a little innocent love of adventure, and it is among these that White Slave traders may easily find what their business demands, while experience enables them to detect the most likely subjects.

Careful inquiry, even among those who have made it their special business to collect all the evidence that can be brought together to prove the infamous character of the White Slave Traffic, has apparently failed to furnish any reliable evidence of these sensational stories. It is easy to find prost.i.tutes who are often dissatisfied with the life (in what occupation is it not easy?), but it is not easy to find prost.i.tutes who cannot escape from that life when they sufficiently wish to do so, and are willing to face the difficulty of finding some other occupation.

The very fact that the whole object of their exploitation is to bring them in contact with men belonging to the outside world is itself a guarantee that they are kept in touch with that world. Mrs.

Billington-Grieg, a well-known pioneer in social movements, has carefully investigated the alleged cases of forcible abduction which were so freely talked about when the White Slave Bill was pa.s.sed into law in England, but even the Vigilance Societies actively engaged in advocating the bill could not enable her to discover a single case in which a girl had been entrapped against her will.[4] No other result could reasonably have been expected. When so many girls are willing, and even eager, to be persuaded, there is little need for the risky adventure of capturing the unwilling. The uneasy realisation of these facts cannot fail to leave many honest Vice-Crusaders with unpleasant memories of their past.

It is not only in regard to alleged facts, but also in regard to proposed remedies, that the White Slave Agitation may properly be criticised. In England it distinguished itself by the ferocity with which the lash was advocated, and finally legalised. Benevolent bishops joined with genteel old maids in calling loudly for whips, and even in desiring to lay them personally on the backs of the offenders, notwithstanding that these Crusaders were nominally Christians, the followers of a Master who conspicuously reserved His indignation, not for sinners and law-breakers, but for self-satisfied saints and scrupulous law-keepers--just the same kind of excellent people, in fact, who are most p.r.o.ne to become Vice-Crusaders. Here again, it is probable, many unpleasant memories have been stored up.

It is well recognised by criminologists that the lash is both a barbarous and an ineffective method of punishment. "The history of flagellation," as Collas states in his great work on this subject, "is the history of a moral bankruptcy."[5] The survival of barbarous punishments from barbarous days, when ferocious punishments were a matter of course and the death penalty was inflicted for horse-stealing without in the least diminishing that offence, may be intelligible. But the re-enactment of such measures in so-called civilised days is an everlasting discredit to those who advocate it, and a disgrace to the community which permits it. This was pointed out at the time by a large body of social reformers, and will no doubt be realised at leisure by the persons concerned in the agitation.

Apart altogether from its barbarity, the lash is peculiarly unsuited for use in the White Slave trade, because it will never descend on the back of the real trader. The whip has no terrors for those engaged in illegitimate financial transactions, for in such transactions the princ.i.p.al can always afford to arrange that it shall fall on a subordinate who finds it worth while to run the risks. This method has long been practised by those who exploit prost.i.tution for profit. To increase the risks merely means that the subordinate must be more heavily paid. That means that the whole business must be carried on more actively to cover the increased risks and expenses. It is a very ancient fact that moral legislation increases the evil it is designed to combat.[6]

It is necessary to point out some of the unhappy features of this agitation, not in order to minimise the evils it was directed against, nor to insinuate that they cannot be lessened, but as a warning against the reaction which follows such ill-considered efforts. The fiery zealot in a fury of blind rage strikes wildly at the evil he has just discovered, and then flings down his weapon, glad to forget all about his momentary rage and the errors it led him into. It is not so that ancient evils are destroyed, evils, it must be remembered, that derive their vitality in part from human nature and in part from the structure of our society. By ensuring that our workers, and especially our women workers, are decently paid, so that they can live comfortably on their wages, we shall not indeed have abolished prost.i.tution, which is more than an economic phenomenon,[7] but we shall more effectually check the White Slave trader than by the most draconic legislation the most imaginative Vice-Crusader ever devised. And when we ensure that these same workers have ample time and opportunity for free and joyous recreation, we shall have done more to kill the fascination of the White Slave Traffic than by endless police regulations for the moral supervision of the young.

No doubt the element of human nature in the manifestations we are concerned with will still be at work, an obscure instinct often acting differently in each s.e.x, but tending to drive both into the same risks.

Here we need even more fundamental social changes. It is sheer foolishness to suppose that when we raise our little dams in the path of a great stream of human impulse that stream will forthwith flow calmly back to its source. We must make our new channels concurrently with our dams. If we wish to influence prost.i.tution we must re-make our marriage laws and modify our whole conception of the s.e.xual relationships. In the meanwhile, we can at least begin to-day a task of education which must slowly though surely undermine the White Slave trader's stronghold. Such an education needs to be not merely instruction in the facts of s.e.x and wise guidance concerning all the dangers and risks of the s.e.xual life; it must also involve a training of the will, a development of the sense of responsibility, such as can never be secured by shutting our young people up in a hot-house, sheltered from every fortifying breath of the outside world. Certainly there are many among us--and precisely the most hopeless persons from our present point of view--who can never grow into really responsible persons.[8] Neither should they ever have been born.

It is our business to see that they are not born; and that, if they are, they are at least placed under due social guardianship, so that we may not be tempted to make laws for society in general which are only needed by this feeble and infirm folk. Thus it is that when we seek to deal with the White Slave Trader and his victims and his patrons we have to realise that they are all very much, as we have made them, moulded by their parents before birth, nourished on their mothers' knees. The task of making them over again next time, and making them better, is a revolutionary task, but it begins at home, and there is no home in which some part of the task cannot be carried out.

It is possible that at some period in the world's history, not only will the White Slave Traffic disappear, but even prost.i.tution itself, and it is for us to work towards that day. But we may be quite sure that the social state which sees the last of the "social evil" will be a social state very unlike ours.

[1] The nature of prost.i.tution and of the White Slave Traffic and their relation to each other may clearly be studied in such valuable first-hand investigations of the subject as _The Social Evil: With Special Reference to Conditions Existing in the City of New York_, 2nd edition, edited by E.R.A. Seligman, Putnam's, 1912; _Commercialised Prost.i.tution in New York City_, by G.J. Kneeland, New York Century Co., 1913; _Prost.i.tution in Europe_, by Abraham Flexner, New York Century Co., 1914; _The Social Evil in Chicago_, by the Vice-Commission of Chicago, 1911. As regards prost.i.tution in England and its causes I should like to call attention to an admirable little book, _Downward Paths_, published by Bell & Sons, 1916. The literature of the subject is, however, extensive, and a useful bibliography will be found in the first-named volume.

[2] This is especially true of many regions in America, both North and South, where a hideous mixture of disparate nationalities furnishes conditions peculiarly favourable to the "White Slave Traffic," when prosperity increases. See, for instance, the well-informed and temperately written book by Miss Jane Addams, _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil_, 1912.

[3] See Havelock Ellis: _s.e.x in Relation to Society (Studies in the Psychology of s.e.x)_, Vol. VI., Ch. VII.

[4] "The White Slave Traffic," _English Review_, June, 1913. It is just just the same in America. Mr. Brand-Whitlock, when Mayor of Toledo, thoroughly investigated a sensational story of this kind brought to him in great detail by a social worker and found that it possessed not the slightest basis of truth. "It was," he remarks in an able paper on "The White Slave" (_Forum_, Feb., 1914), "simply another variant of the story that had gone the rounds of the continents, a story which had been somehow psychologically timed to meet the hysteria which the pulpit, the Press, and the legislature had displayed."

[5] G.F. Collas, _Geschichte des Flagellantismus_, 1913, Vol. I., p. 16.

[6] I have brought together some of the evidence on this point in the chapter on "Immorality and the Law" in my book, _The Task of Social Hygiene_.

[7] The idea is cherished by many, especially among socialists, that prost.i.tution is mainly an economic question, and that to raise wages is to dry up the stream of prost.i.tution. That is certainly a fallacy, unsupported by careful investigators, though all are agreed that the economic condition of the wage-earner is one factor in the problem. Thus Commissioner Adelaide c.o.x, at the head of the Women's Social Wing of the Salvation Army, speaking from a very long and extensive acquaintance with prost.i.tutes, while not denying that women are often "wickedly underpaid," finds that the cause of prost.i.tution is "essentially a moral one, and cannot be successfully fought by other than moral weapons."--(_Westminster Gazette_, Dec. 2nd, 1912). In a yet wider sense, it may be said that the question of the causes of prost.i.tution is essentially social.

[8] This is a very important clue indeed in dealing with the problem of prost.i.tution. "It is the weak-minded, unintelligent girl," G.o.ddard states in his valuable work on _Feeblemindedness_, "who makes the White Slave Traffic possible." Dr. Hickson found that over 85 per cent. of the women brought before the Morals Court in Chicago were distinctly feeble-minded, and Dr. Olga Bridgeman states that among the girls committed for s.e.xual delinquency to the Training School of Geneva, Illinois, 97 per cent. were feeble-minded by the Binet tests, and to be regarded as "helpless victims." (Walter Clarke, _Social Hygiene_, June, 1915, and _Journal of Mental Science_, Jan., 1916, p. 222.) There are fallacies in these figures, but it would appear that about half of the prost.i.tutes in inst.i.tutions are to be regarded as mentally defective.

XI

THE CONQUEST OF VENEREAL DISEASE

The final Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases has brought to an end an important and laborious investigation at what many may regard as an unfavourable moment. Perhaps, however, the moment is not so unfavourable as it seems. There is no period when venereal diseases flourish so exuberantly as in war time, and we shall have a sad harvest to gather here when the War is over.[1] Moreover, the War is teaching us to face the real facts of life more frankly and more courageously than ever before, and there is no field, scarcely even a battlefield, where a training in frankness and courage is so necessary as in this of Venereal Disease. It is difficult even to say that there is any larger field, for it has been found possible to doubt whether the great War of to-day, when all is summed up, will have produced more death, disease, and misery than is produced in the ordinary course of events, during a single generation, by venereal disease.

There are, as every man and woman ought to know, two main and quite distinct diseases (any other being unimportant) poetically termed "Venereal" because chiefly, though not by any means only, propagated in the intercourse over which the Roman G.o.ddess Venus once presided. These two diseases are syphilis and gonorrhoea. Both these diseases are very serious, often terrible, in their effects on the individual attacked, and both liable to be poisonous to the race. There has long been a popular notion that, while syphilis is indeed an awful disease, gonorrhoea may be accepted with a light heart. That, we now know, is a grave mistake. Gonorrhoea may seem trivial at the outset, but its results, especially for a woman and her children (when it allows her to have any), are anything but trivial; while its greater frequency, and the indifference with which it is regarded, still further increase its dangers.

About the serious nature of syphilis there is no doubt. It is a comparatively modern disease, not clearly known in Europe before the discovery of America at the end of the fifteenth century, and by some authorities[2] to-day supposed to have been imported from America. But it soon ravaged the whole of our world, and has continued to do so ever since. During recent years it has perhaps shown a slight tendency to decrease, though nothing to what could be achieved by systematic methods; but its evils are still sufficiently alarming. Exactly how common it is cannot be ascertained with certainty. At least 10 per cent., probably more, of the population in our large cities have been infected by syphilis, some before birth. In 1912 for an average strength of 120,000 men in the English Navy, nearly 300,000 days were lost as a result of venereal disease, while among 100,000 soldiers in the Home Army for the same year, an average of nearly 600 men were constantly sick from the same cause. We may estimate from this small example how vast must be the total loss of working power due to venereal disease.

Moreover, in Sir William Osler's words, "of the killing diseases syphilis comes third or fourth." Its prevalence varies in different regions and different social cla.s.ses. The mortality rate from syphilis for males above fifteen is highest for unskilled labour, then for the group intermediate between unskilled and skilled labour, then for the upper and middle cla.s.s, followed by the group intermediate between this cla.s.s and skilled labour, while skilled labour, textile workers, and miners follow, and agricultural labourers come out most favourably of all. These differences do not represent any ascending grade in virtue or s.e.xual abstinence, but are dependent upon differences in social condition; thus syphilis is comparatively rare among agricultural labourers because they a.s.sociate only with women they know and are not exposed to the temptation of strange women, while it is high among the upper cla.s.s because they are shut out from s.e.xual intimacy with women of their own cla.s.s and so resort to prost.i.tutes. On the whole, however, it will be seen, the poison of syphilis is fairly diffused among all cla.s.ses. This poison may work through many years or even the whole of life, and its early manifestations are the least important. It may begin before birth: thus, one recent investigation shows that in 150 syphilitic families there were only 390 seemingly healthy children to 401 infant deaths, stillbirths, and miscarriages (as against 172 in 180 healthy families), the great majority of these failures being infant deaths and thus representing a large amount of wasted energy and expense.[3] Syphilis is, again, the most serious single cause of the most severe forms of brain disease and insanity, this often coming on many years after the infection, and when the early symptoms were but slight. Blindness and deafness from the beginning of life are in a large proportion of cases due to syphilis. There is, indeed, no organ of the body which is not liable to break down, often with fatal results, through syphilis, so that it has been well said that a doctor who knows syphilis thoroughly is familiar with every branch of his profession.

Gonorrhoea is a still commoner disease than syphilis; how common it is very difficult to say. It is also an older disease, for the ancient Egyptians knew it, and the Biblical King Esarhaddon of a.s.syria, as the records of his court show, once caught it. It seems to some people no more serious than a common cold, yet it is able to inflict much prolonged misery on its victims, while on the race its influence in the long run is even more deadly than that of syphilis, for gonorrhoea is the chief cause of sterility in women, that is to say, in from 30 to 50 per cent. of such cases, while of cases of sterility in men (which form a quarter to a third of the whole) gonorrhoea is the cause in from 70 to 90 per cent. The inflammation of the eyes of the new-born leading to blindness is also in 70 per cent. cases due to gonorrhoea in the mother, and this occurs in over six per 1,000 births.

Three years ago a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate the best methods of controlling venereal disease, as small-pox, typhus, and to a large extent typhoid, have already been controlled. The Commission was well composed, not merely of officials and doctors, but of experienced men and women in various fields, and the final Report is signed by all the members, any difference of opinion being confined to minor points (which it is unnecessary to touch on here) and to two members only. The recommendations are conceived in the most practical and broad-minded spirit. They are neither faddy nor goody-goody. Some indeed may wish that they had gone further. The Commission leave over for later consideration the question of notifying venereal disease as other infectious diseases are notified, and there is no recommendation for the provision of preventive methods against infection for use before intercourse, such as are officially favoured in Germany. But at both these points the Commissioners have been wise, for they are points to which sections of public opinion are still strongly hostile.[4] As they stand, the recommendations should carry conviction to all serious and reasonable persons. Already, indeed, the Government, without opposition, has expressed its willingness to undertake the financial burden which the Commission would impose on it.

The main Recommendations made by the Commission, if we put aside the suggestions for obtaining a more exact statistical knowledge, may be placed under the heads of Treatment and Prevention. As regards the first, it is insisted that measures should be taken to render the best modern treatment, which should be free to all, readily available for the whole community, in such a way that those affected will have no hesitation in taking advantage of the facilities thus offered. The means of treatment should be organised by County Councils and Boroughs, under the Local Government Board, which should have power to make independent arrangements when the local authorities fail in their duties. Inst.i.tutional treatment should be provided at all general hospitals, special arrangements made for the treatment of out-patients in the evenings, and no objection offered to patients seeking treatment outside their own neighbourhoods. The expenditure should be a.s.sisted by grants from Imperial Funds to the extent of 75 per cent. It may be added that, however heavy such expenditure may be, an economy can scarcely fail to be effected. The financial cost of venereal disease to-day is so vast as to be beyond calculation. It enters into every field of life. It is enough merely to consider the significant little fact that the cost of educating a deaf child is ten times as great as that of educating an ordinary child.

Under the head of Prevention we may place such a suggestion as that the existence of infective venereal disease should const.i.tute legal incapacity for marriage, even when unknown, and be a sufficient cause for annulling the marriage at the discretion of the court. But by far the chief importance under this head is a.s.signed by the Commission to education and instruction. We see here the vindication of those who for years have been teaching that the first essential in dealing with venereal disease is popular enlightenment. There must be more careful instruction--"through all types and grades of education"--on the s.e.xual relations in regard to conduct, while further instruction should be provided in evening continuation schools, as well as factories and works, with the aid of properly const.i.tuted voluntary a.s.sociations.

These are sound and practical recommendations which, as the Government has realised, can be put in action at once. A few years ago any attempt to control venereal disease was considered by many to be almost impious.

Such disease was held to be the just visitation of G.o.d upon sin and to interfere would be wicked. We know better now. A large proportion of those who are most severely struck by venereal disease are new-born children and trustful wives, while a simple kiss or the use of towels and cups in common has constantly served to spread venereal disease in a family. Even when we turn to the commonest method of infection, we have still to remember that we are dealing largely with inexperienced youths, with loving and trustful girls, who have yielded to the deepest and most volcanic impulse of their natures, and have not yet learnt that that impulse is a thing to be held sacred for their own sakes and the sake of the race. In so far as there is sin, it is sin which must be shared by those who have failed to train and enlighten the young. A Pharisaic att.i.tude is not only highly mischievous in its results, but is here altogether out of place. Much harm has been done in the past by the action of Benefit Societies in withholding recognition and treatment from venereal disease.

It is evident that this thought was at the back of the minds of those who framed these wise recommendations. We cannot expect to do away all at once with the feeling that venereal disease is "shameful." It may not even be desirable. But we can at least make clear that, in so far as there is any shame, it must be a question between the individual and his own conscience. From the point of view of science, syphilis and gonorrhoea are just diseases, like cancer and consumption, the only diseases with which they can be compared in the magnitude and extent of their results, and therefore it is best to speak of them by their scientific names, instead of trying to invent vague and awkward circ.u.mlocutions. From the point of view of society, any att.i.tude of shame is unfortunate, because it is absolutely essential that these diseases should be met in the open and grappled with methodically and thoroughly. Otherwise, as the Commission recognises, the sufferer is apt to become the prey of ignorant quacks whose inefficient treatment is largely responsible for the development of the latest and worst afflictions these diseases produce when not effectually nipped in the bud. That they can be thus cut short--far more easily than consumption, to say nothing of cancer--is the fact which makes it possible to hope for a conquest over venereal disease. It is a conquest that would make the whole world more beautiful and deliver love from its ugliest shadow. But the victory cannot be won by science alone, not even in alliance with officialdom. It can only be won through the enlightened co-operation of the whole nation.

[1] The increase of venereal disease during the Great War has been noted alike in Germany, France, and England. Thus, as regards France, Gaucher has stated at the Paris Academy of Medicine (_Journal de Medicine_, May 10th, 1916) that since mobilisation syphilis had increased by nearly one half, alike among soldiers and civilians; it had much increased in quite young people and in elderly men. In Germany, Neisser, a leading authority, states (_Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift_, 14th Jan., 1915) that the prevalence of venereal disease is much greater than in the war of 1870, and that "every day many thousands, not to say tens of thousands, of otherwise able-bodied men are withdrawn from the service on this account."

[2] The chief is Iwan Bloch who, in his elaborate work, _Der Ursprung der Syphilis_ (2 vols., 1901, 1911), has fully investigated the evidence.

[3] N. Bishop Harman, "The Influence of Syphilis on the Chances of Progeny," _British Medical Journal_, Feb. 5th, 1916.

[4] It is true that in my book, _s.e.x in Relation to Society_ (Ch. VIII.) I have stated my belief that notification, as in the case of other serious infectious diseases, is the first step in the conquest of venereal disease. I still think it ought to be so. But a yet more preliminary step is popular enlightenment as to the need for such notification. The recommendations seem to me to go as far as it is possible to go at the moment in English-speaking countries without producing friction and opposition. In so far as they are carried out the recommendations will ensure the necessary popular enlightenment.

XII

THE NATIONALISATION OF HEALTH

It was inevitable that we should some day have to face the problem of medical reorganisation on a social basis. Along many lines social progress has led to the initiation of movements for the improvement of public health. But they are still incomplete and imperfectly co-ordinated. We have never realised that the great questions of health cannot safely be left to munic.i.p.al tinkering and the patronage of b.u.mbledom. The result is chaos and a terrible waste, not only of what we call "hard cash," but also of sensitive flesh and blood. Health, there cannot be the slightest doubt, is a vastly more fundamental and important matter than education, to say nothing of such minor matters as the post office or the telephone system. Yet we have nationalised these before even giving a thought to the Nationalisation of Health.

At the present day medicine is mainly in the hands, as it was two thousand years ago, of the "private pract.i.tioner." His mental status has, indeed, changed. To-day he is submitted to a long and arduous training in magnificently equipped inst.i.tutions; all the laboriously acquired processes and results of modern medicine and hygiene are brought within the student's reach. And when he leaves the hospital, often with the largest and n.o.blest conception of the physician's place in life, what do we do with him? He becomes a "private pract.i.tioner,"

which means, as Duclaux, the late distinguished Director of the Pasteur Inst.i.tute, put it, that we place him on the level of a retail grocer who must patiently stand behind his counter (without the privilege of advertising himself) until the public are pleased to come and buy advice or drugs which are usually applied for too late to be of much use, and may be thrown away at the buyer's good pleasure, without the possibility of any protest by the seller. It is little wonder that in many cases the doctor's work and aims suffer under such conditions; his nature is subdued to what it works in; he clings convulsively to his counter and its retail methods.

The fact is--and it is a fact that is slowly becoming apparent to all--that the private practice of medicine is out of date. It fails to answer the needs of our time. There are various reasons why this should be the case, but two are fundamental. In the first place, medicine has outgrown the capacity of any individual doctor; the only adequate private pract.i.tioner must have a sound general knowledge of medicine with an expert knowledge of a dozen specialties; that is to say, he must give place to a staff of doctors acting co-ordinately, for the present system, or lack of system, by which a patient wanders at random from private pract.i.tioner to specialist, from specialist to specialist _ad infinitum_, is altogether mischievous. Moreover, not only is it impossible for the private pract.i.tioner to possess the knowledge required to treat his patients adequately: he cannot possess the scientific mechanical equipment nowadays required alike for diagnosis and treatment, and every day becoming more elaborate, more expensive, more difficult to manipulate. It is installed in our great hospitals for the benefit of the poorest patient; it could, perhaps, be set up in a millionaire's palace, but it is hopelessly beyond the private pract.i.tioner, though without it his work must remain unsatisfactory and inadequate.[1] In the second place, the whole direction of modern medicine is being changed and to an end away from private practice; our thoughts are not now mainly bent on the cure of disease but on its prevention. Medicine is becoming more and more transformed into hygiene, and in this transformation, though the tasks presented are larger and more systematic, they are also easier and more economical. These two fundamental tendencies of modern medicine--greater complexity of its methods and the predominantly preventive character of its aims--alone suffice to render the position of the private pract.i.tioner untenable. He cannot cope with the complexity of modern medicine; he has no authority to enforce its hygiene.

The medical system of the future must be a national system co-ordinating all the conditions of health. At the centre we should expect to find a Minister of Health, and every doctor of the State would give his whole time to his work and be paid by salary which in the case of the higher posts would be equal to that now fixed for the higher legal offices, for the chief doctor in the State ought to be at least as important an official as the Lord Chancellor. Hospitals and infirmaries would be alike nationalised, and, in place of the present antagonism between hospitals and the bulk of the medical profession, every doctor would be in touch with a hospital, thus having behind him a fully equipped and staffed inst.i.tution for all purposes of diagnosis, consultation, treatment, and research, also serving for a centre of notification, registration, preventive and hygienic measures. In every district the citizen would have a certain amount of choice as regards the medical man to whom he may go for advice, but no one would be allowed to escape the medical supervision and registration of his district, for it is essential that the central Health Authority of every district should know the health conditions of all the inhabitants of the district. Only by some such organised and co-ordinated system as this can the primary conditions of Health, and preventive measures against disease, be genuinely socialised.

These views were put forward by the present writer twenty years ago in a little book on _The Nationalisation of Health_, which, though it met with wide approval, was probably regarded by most people as Utopian.

Since then the times have moved, a new generation has sprung up, and ideas which, twenty years ago, were brooded over by isolated thinkers are now seen to be in the direct line of progress; they have become the property of parties and matters of active propaganda. Even before the introduction of State Insurance Professor Benjamin Moore, in his able book, _The Dawn of the Health Age_, antic.i.p.ating the actual march of events, formulated a State Insurance Scheme which would lead on, as he pointed out, to a genuinely National Medical Service, and later, Dr.