This does not mean that both doctors and druggists will disappear completely, but it certainly means that a new order of things is upon the threshold.
This is the year Nineteen-Hundred and Thirteen.
Between the years 1922 and 1932 we may expect to have established a National Board of Health, with a chief officer in the cabinet and an organization similar to that of the Army, in which every physician and every pharmacist will be an officer of the United States Government. Those physicians, under the new order, who remain in the office awaiting the call of the sick will be comparatively few in number. The remainder will be out in the broad domain of practical Hygiene. Every factory, farm, field, forest, stream, mines, and what not, will then come under the watchful eye of this new Army which, with all of the wisdom of science, will guard the health of the country, if anything, more zealously than it is guarded against foreign foes. Every occupational disease will be banished, every case of communicable disease will be promptly isolated.
The men who are to perform this service will be the doctors and druggists of today who survive at that time, together with those who shall be hereafter graduated in those professions; not that all of these men are at present fitted for this work, but their training and experience make them the most available.
They will, however, be subjected to periodic examinations that shall determine their advance and pay, and each one will gravitate into the place that best suits his capacity.
The pay of these men will be suitable to the dignity of their calling, certainly not less than that of a lieutenant in the United States Army.
Under this new order the people will receive their medicine and medical treatment upon the same plan that they now receive their public school education.
To the incredulous, it may be said that the people of Philadelphia alone spend annually fifteen millions of dollars for medical treatment and medicine. Under the new system the cost would be less than half of that sum, and the people will receive better attention than at present.
Schools of medicine and pharmacy will be government institutions, as are West Point and Annapolis, and their various laboratories will be the main centres from which the operations of this Hygienic Army shall be directed.
To the incredulous, again, it may be said, these conditions are coming, not because they are being sought, nor even desired, but they will be thrust upon us through the force of economic necessity.