The social solution of the medical problem, then, depends on that large,
slowly advancing, pettishly resisted integration of society called
generally Socialism. Until the medical profession becomes a body of men
trained and paid by the country to keep the country in health it will
remain what it is at present: a conspiracy to exploit popular credulity
and human suffering. Already our M.O.H.s (Medical Officers of Health)
are in the new position: what is lacking is appreciation of the change,
not only by the public but by the private doctors. For, as we have seen,
when one of the first-rate posts becomes vacant in one of the great
cities, and all the leading M.O.H.s compete for it, they must appeal to
the good health of the cities of which they have been in charge, and not
to the size of the incomes the local private doctors are making out of
the ill-health of their patients. If a competitor can prove that he has
utterly ruined every sort of medical private practice in a large city
except obstetric practice and the surgery of accidents, his claims are
irresistible; and this is the ideal at which every M.O.H. should aim.
But the profession at large should none the less welcome him and set
its house in order for the social change which will finally be its own
salvation. For the M.O.H. as we know him is only the beginning of that
army of Public Hygiene which will presently take the place in general
interest and honor now occupied by our military and naval forces. It is
silly that an Englishman should be more afraid of a German soldier than
of a British disease germ, and should clamor for more barracks in the
same newspapers that protest against more school clinics, and cry out
that if the State fights disease for us it makes us paupers, though
they never say that if the State fights the Germans for us it makes us
cowards. Fortunately, when a habit of thought is silly it only needs
steady treatment by ridicule from sensible and witty people to be put
out of countenance and perish. Every year sees an increase in the number
of persons employed in the Public Health Service, who would formerly
have been mere adventurers in the Private Illness Service. To put it
another way, a host of men and women who have now a strong incentive
to be mischievous and even murderous rogues will have a much stronger,
because a much honester, incentive to be not only good citizens but
active benefactors to the community. And they will have no anxiety
whatever about their incomes.