A PROFESSION'S UNION.
At Bas-Unterwald, according to the Swiss Times:—
"Strikes are becoming the fashion in the higher circles of society. The physicians of this peaceful Arcadia have united and struck work, demanding an increase in their fees. The Laudrath, however, refuses to entertain their claims, and advises a strike of the patients as the best answer to the physicians' demands."
There was a time when a strike of patients anywhere would have been attended with a very great decrease of the rate of mortality. There is reason to suppose that in the present improved condition of medical science such would not be the case. The strikers, struck with fever, or other grave illness, would probably be struck down in rather alarming numbers.
What justification of a medical strike there may be in Switzerland hath not appeared, but in this country there is, in some quarters, not a little. The ridiculously low wages, not to say salary, begrudged, not to say granted, to Medical Officers by many Poor-Law Unions would amply warrant the establishment of a Professional Union corresponding to a Trades' Union, and consisting of sons of Æsculapius. The medico-chirurgical Unionists could manage a strike well enough without committing any outrage on the Non-Unionists, or Knobsticks. There would be no need for the Doctors on strike to picket, and waylay, and beat the others on their road to the Workhouse, or across country to the recipient of out-door relief; and they could do without rattening them and filching away their physic, stethoscopes, and surgical instruments. In dealing with unworthy members of an honourable Profession, capable of underselling their brother-chips, the practitioners forming the Union would require to have recourse to no proceedings associated with Sheffield; they would find it quite sufficient to send outsiders and recusants of co-operation in a strike to Coventry.