The Dispensary Doctor

"SOLDIER, sailor, tinker, tailor"-the Irish dispensary doctor has to be a veritabie "jack of all trades." Situated, as he often is, remote from any professional assistance , he must needs be somewhat of a universal specialist-surgeon, physician, obstetrician, gynaecologist, anasthetist, and expert in sanitary science, for he is medical officer of health for his district, all in one person, not to speak of his other activities, for he is his own dispenser, and also, in most cases, registrar of births, deaths, and marriages. He is on duty for twenty-four hours a day, for seven days a week, during from forty-eight to fifty weeks a year, and is at the beck and call of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who can get a ticket to commandeer his services; and it is not difficult to obtain these, seeing that they are on issue by wardens and guardians who are, in many cases, grocers or publicans, and who dispense them as bonuses with quarter pounds of tea or botles of stout, irrespective of the medical needs or financial circumstances of the applicant. He is confined, more or less as a prisoner, within the boundaries of his district, and woe betide him if he happens to have strayed outside those boundaries when his services are called upon for some patient who is, not infrequently, in as good physical health as the doctor himself. He sees with envy his more fortunate neighbour, the bank official, the civil servant, or the teacher in the public elementary school, occupy his ample leisure with rod or gun, tennis racket or golf clubs, whilst any time which he may have to spare from his official duties is necessarily taken up with the attempt to earn a living for himself and his family by private practice, his official salary leaving but little margin after his necessary professional expenses are defrayed. This salary, though greater in amount than when the service was initiated in 1851, is less in actual purchasing power, and his work has greatly increased since then in spite of a large fall in population. This is due to several causes, the chief of which are the gvadual elimination of the small farmer, who employed no labour outside of his own family, and who was a private patient paying moderate Lees for attendance on himself and his household, and his replacement by the larger farmer employing several labourers, all …