Macilwaine, in a little book entitled _Medical Revolution_, again
advocated the same changes: the establishment of a Ministry of Health,
a medical service on a preventive basis, and the reform of the
hospitals which must constitute the nucleus of such a service. It may
be said that for medical men no longer engaged in private practice it
is easy to view the disappearance of private practice with serenity;
but it must be added that it is precisely that disinterested serenity
which makes possible also a clear insight into the problems and a wider
view of the new horizons of medicine. Thus it is that to-day the
dreamers of yesterday are justified.
The great scheme of State Insurance was certainly an important step
towards the socialisation of medicine. It came short, indeed, of the
complete Nationalisation of Health as an affair of State. But that
could not possibly be introduced at one move. Apart even from the
difficulty of complete reorganisation, the two great vested interests
of private medical practice on the one hand and Friendly Societies on
the other would stand in the way. A complicated transitional period is
necessary, during which those two interests are conciliated and
gradually absorbed. It is this transitional period which State
Insurance has inaugurated. To compare small things to great--as we may,
for the same laws run all through Nature and Society--this scheme
corresponds to the ancient Ptolomaean system of astronomy, with its
painfully elaborate epicycles, which preceded and led on to the sublime
simplicity of the Copernican system.
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