The Mutual Interest of the Profession and the Public

Abstract

The profession and the public have a large mutual interest which unites them in a common task and draws them toward a single objective. That interest consists of a surplusage of unnecessary, untreated and inadequately treated disease and impairment, which, in its totality, constitutes a waiting field of medical practice from two to five times greater than the present occupied field of medicine. The last statement constitutes the major premise of this paper, and is so related to what follows as to make its assimilation by the digestive or analytic process advisable before other related matters are considered. We turn, then, to a brief and rather general analysis of the unoccupied field of medicine.Beginning with maternity, we find from 25 to 35 per cent., say an average of 30 per cent., of the births of this country, a total of approximately 750,000 births a year, unattended by physicians. These women pass