The workhouse and its medical officer / by Alfred Sheen.

  • Sheen, Alfred.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The workhouse and its medical officer / by Alfred Sheen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    place let him refrain from ordering them for any in- mates but those who are on the sick list; secondly, let him deal with his patients as they would he dealt within any ordinary hospital, at the same time exercising a very strict supervision on the consumption. He can- not then go far wrong. It may he some satisfaction to him to know that he has full authority in the ordering of stimulants for his patients. “ The Medical Officer, and the Medical Officer alone, is the judge of what medicines his patients should have. He is responsible for the treatment, and any outside interference from non-professional quarters is as unjustifiable as it is mischievous.” (Dr. Norman Kerr; British Medical Journal, vol. ii, 1882, p. 33(5.) If the Medical Officer, without bias, believes that all sick cases can be treated without stimulants, he has a free hand—let him have a teetotal workhouse. On the other hand, if he believes that stimulants are ne- cessary in certain cases, he may fearlessly prescribe them. Temperance agitation has undoubtedly done much good in restraining the indiscriminate use of stimulants in workhouses, but it is to he feared that, in not a few instances, easy-going Medical Officers have allowed themselves to he influenced in a wrong direction. In my opinion it would he utopian to expect that the use of stimulants, any more than the use of medi- cines, can be entirely abolished in the treatment of