LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
THE STATE AND THE DOCTOR
Demy 8vo, pp. viii and 276 (1910). Price 6s. net.
In this work a great deal that will be new to the ordinary citizen is brought to light. The authors show that we do a great deal of State Doctoring in England—more than is commonly realised—and that our arrangements have got into a tangle, which urgently needs straightening out. Everywhere there is a duplication of authorities, and more or less overlapping of work. We are spending out of the rates and taxes, in one way or another, directly on sickness and Public Health, a vast sum of money annually—no man knows how much, but it certainly amounts to six or seven millions sterling. Meanwhile, as is now being revealed to us, a vast amount of sickness goes altogether untreated, with the result of grave damage to our population, and unnecessary loss of productive capacity to the community as a whole.
The authors suggest that we put up with this waste, and we allow our statesmen to postpone the task of straightening out the tangle, very largely because we are not aware of the facts. There has hitherto been no popular description of our State Doctoring. Many worthy people, thinking themselves educated, do not even know of its existence. There is not even an official report setting forth exactly what is being done and left undone for sickness and the Public Health in the different parts of the kingdom.
But the authors do not content themselves with a picture of the costly and wasteful muddle that our responsible statesmen allow, session after session, to continue unreformed. The work concludes with a remarkable series of proposals for "straightening out the tangle"—proposals based on the very authoritative evidence received by the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, supported not only by the administrators, but also by a large section of the medical profession, and rapidly commending themselves to the unprejudiced enquirer.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.