An address on our duty to the consumptive breadearner : delivered to the Oxford and District and Reading and Upper Thames Branches of the British Medical Association, June 28th, 1901 / by Sir J. Burdon-Sanderson.

  • Burdon-Sanderson, John Scott, 1828-1905.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An address on our duty to the consumptive breadearner : delivered to the Oxford and District and Reading and Upper Thames Branches of the British Medical Association, June 28th, 1901 / by Sir J. Burdon-Sanderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    6/12 (page 4)
    tions is all-powerful in our hospitals for consumption. Bene- factors are not satisfied with the assurance that their gifts are administered by competent persons in the most effectual way for securing the end which they profess to have in view. They are unwilling to forego their undeniable right to do what they will with their own. Like those charitable donors of whom we read in Holy Scripture, they must needs “ keep back part of the price ”—not indeed in the form of money, but in the exercise of a paltry kind of patronage. What is required is roughly that there should be a haven of refuge in every industrial centre (consisting of a hospital ward or a hospital) to which the need of the sufferer—in this case the existence of the physical signs and symptoms of advancing phthisis—should be the only claim for admission, and that every admission should be conditional on liability to removal at the discretion of the medical authority in charge. By the enforcement of this condition the risk of converting the temporary refuge into a permanent asylum would be guarded against, while at the same time the workman who had found the tide of adversity too strong for him would be enabled to regain his footing, and once more resume the struggle, if not with renewed vigour, at least with some renewal of hope and courage. Now it cannot be said that anything effectual has as yet been done in the direction I have indicated. In London the phthisical workman has no great difficulty in obtaining an out-patient letter for a general or special hospital; but from the moment that the progress of his disease renders him un- able to attend, his position becomes a painful one. The nature of his disease shuts against him the doors of the general hospital, and if by good luck he obtains an “in- patient letter” for a special hospital, the delay which undue regard for the rights of governors necessarily entails is so long that he does not arrive at his desired haven until too late. Prompt admission might have restored him to com- parative health, but the time for successful treatment has been spent under the unfavourable conditions of his home, where he has not only undergone suffering that might have been prevented, but has been a source of danger to his neighbours. The risk of allowing a patient with acute sym- ptoms to live among others is indeed, irrespectively of the detriment to himself, a sufficient reason for his immediate removal from his surroundings. Measures to be taken for the Prolongation of TnE Life of the Consumptive Breadearner and for the Maintenance of his Earning Power. Let us now go on to the second of the two requirements to which I referred a few minutes ago. The obligation to make adequate provision for the prompt medical relief of the phthisical workman during the acute accessions to which he is liable is one which no one will be inclined to disregard, but it is only a small part of the duty that is imposed upon us. The motivewhicli actuates us should be rather economic than charitable. Our aim should be not so much the relief of suffering as the maintenance of earning power. The im- portant problem we have in hand is to determine the line of action which ought to be adopted to help those who, although they are in a certain true sense invalids, neither desire nor require the intervention of charity.