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It is quite possible for the dispensary doctor to be given a few key villages
which he can visit on certain days of the week, and for him to become
a rural area doctor rather than one who sits at . his headquarters and waits
for the patients to visit him.
(ii) Travelling dispensaries.—The travelling dispensary can only be of
use where the area to be covered is a limited one, thus enabling frequent
Visits to be paid. When used to deal with special diseases, e.g ., travelling:
'clinics connected with eye diseases, this form of medical aid is very
valuable. A. fully equipped travelling dispensary is expensive and a travel-
ling doctor with fixed headquarter and with branch consulting rooms.
in a group . of villages is a more useful unit.
(iii) Rural medical practitioner.—The essence of this scheme, which
has been specially popular in Madras, is that the medical practitioner is
engaged on a fixed annual subsidy with a small yearly allowance for medi-
cine and equipment. In return for this he undertakes to treat the sick
poor free, and he should be allowed travelling allowance or be given facili-
ties for visiting surrounding villages. In most provinces the net-work of
dispensaries is adequate, and money should be devoted to transform them
into small cottage or country hospitals rather than to increase their number.
In many cases it will be possible with advantage to use such an institution
as the headquarters for the rural practitioner from which he could travel
by train or motor car through the surrounding villages.
(iv)
Unqualified aid .—In some provinces use has been made of the
school master or other educated persons in the village, with a limited
training, to give first aid to the villagers. On the whole, these schemes
have not been successful, and after a short period the half-trained indivi-
dual, like the compounder, is only too inclined to set himself up as a fully
qualified doctor to the general disadvantage of the village.
(v) Indigenous medicine.—It is not within the scope of this Review to
comment in any way upon the practice of indigenous medicine in the
country. The desire in certain provinces to introduce registration for these
practitioners and in others to introduce proper courses of instruction
which will include necessary teaching in the basic medical science opens
out possibilities for their more intelligent use . in the villages.
6. No account of Rural Medical Relief could be complete without
mention of the work done in India by Missionary Societies, which is des
- c r i b e d i n S e c t i o n 1 7 o f t h i s C h a p t e r .
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7. The efforts of the medical and health departments can, to mutual
advantage, be co-ordinated, with the rural doctor as the common agent
for both and every scheme for rural medical relief would be incomplete
without such co-ordination. Treatment and prevention, as applied to
medicine, are inseparable and the rural doctor is the man in whom the
v i l l a g e r h a s c o n f i d e n c e a n d t o w h o s e a d v i c e h e w i l l l i s t e n . I f t h e d i s p e n s a r y
doctor has more sick to attend to than he can cope with, any public
health Work requiring much time cannot be taken up by him as it will