I still think it ought to be so. But a yet more
preliminary step is popular enlightenment as to the need for such
notification. The recommendations seem to me to go as far as it is
possible to go at the moment in English-speaking countries without
producing friction and opposition. In so far as they are carried out
the recommendations will ensure the necessary popular enlightenment.
XII
THE NATIONALISATION OF HEALTH
It was inevitable that we should some day have to face the problem of
medical reorganisation on a social basis. Along many lines social
progress has led to the initiation of movements for the improvement
of public health. But they are still incomplete and imperfectly
co-ordinated. We have never realised that the great questions of health
cannot safely be left to municipal tinkering and the patronage of
Bumbledom. The result is chaos and a terrible waste, not only of what
we call "hard cash," but also of sensitive flesh and blood. Health,
there cannot be the slightest doubt, is a vastly more fundamental and
important matter than education, to say nothing of such minor matters
as the post office or the telephone system. Yet we have nationalised
these before even giving a thought to the Nationalisation of Health.
At the present day medicine is mainly in the hands, as it was two
thousand years ago, of the "private practitioner." His mental status
has, indeed, changed. To-day he is submitted to a long and arduous
training in magnificently equipped institutions; all the laboriously
acquired processes and results of modern medicine and hygiene are
brought within the student's reach.
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