Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-03-13
FOREIGN RESORTS.
SWITZERLAND.
RETURN OF FAMILY DOCTOR.
Who Should Not Be Minimized by
the Specialist.

L rom the Boston transcript
The recent opening of a hospital here
afforded a visiting physician excuse and
opportunity to say. on behalf Of the gen.
eral practitioner, some things that doubt
less need to be said, but that. for OBJ
vious reasons, one of our own medical
men would have hesitated to utter. The
point of the address was that the family
doctor is returning to the place of honor
which he occupied fifty years ago. and
that presently We shall once more find
him accepted at his rightful valuation as
physician. counselor and household friend.
1t will not be needful that, to this end,
We shall do away with the specialist; we
cannot dispense with him, indeed but 1t
Will be necessary for us to recognize that
the general practitioner stands on quite
as high plane and that we are not JUS
titled in f1outing him because his fee for
consultation is only about one-fiftieth OF
that demanded by the man who ministers
exclusively to the ears or nose or lungs
or throat.
The specialist met a long-felt want
and developed in a perfectly natural way
During the last third of the nineteenth
century the science of medicine advanced
by leaps and bounds. The researches of
bacterologistS alone opened a new world
to the student, and the amazing exploits
of modern surgeons, though they appeared
to delimit his field, intellectually increased
his knowledge. 1t was not strange that
young men who entered the profession In.
let us say, the early '10s, should have
been trif1e bewildered and overawed by
the vast area that lay before them, and IL
was not to their discredft that many of
them resolved to circumscribe their do
ings to one little space. Their brethren
and the public have profted greatly by
such concentration Of effort. 1t is doubt
less true that the course of the specialists
has brought some of them wealth; but it
is equally true that the mastery they
have gained over specific diseases and the
instruction which they have impaired can
never be adequately compensated by any
community in which these "one-idea
men, have lived and worked.
Nevertheless. our visitor pointed out,
the time is ripe for a more generous rec
ognition Of the general practitioner. the
family DOCTOR" who ushers us into the
world, attends us through the physical
perils Of childhood and maturer age, and
finally heartens us for the painful steps
of the last journey. There are few men
and women who have not tender men,
cries of some practitioner who was hon.
ored as physician and loved as friend.
and who. though he did not make
money" was rich indeed in confidence and
esteem. Circumstances of recent years
have not seemed SO explicitly to favor the
development of men of his type as they
did, say, fifty years ago. but it seems to
u.s. as it did to the physician whom We
have quoted. that conditions are chang
ing. The medical student of today has an
opportunity through clinics and hospital
practice to cover a range of experience
that his grandfather could hardly have
comprehended in fifty years of bedside
ministration. Thus there Is no reason
why the general practitioner should not
be competent man and a useful one.
And there Is every reason why he should
"come to his own" because first and last
and almost always. We need him.