260 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



vention of Blindness, ask him to support them or work 

 with them. Again, he is confused. What are laymen 

 doing in the field of medicine? What ought they to do? 

 What should be the doctor's attitude to such bodies'? 

 Wliat are the social relations of the doctor and the medi- 

 cal profession? What is State Medicine and what effect 

 will it have on him? What are Health and Industrial 

 Insurance? What is Contract Practice? What shall he 

 do about all these things that surround him every day 

 and that his teachers never told him about? He doesn't 

 know because during all the years of his training he 

 never knew there was such a thing as medical sociology 

 — that great field that has developed so rapidly in the 

 last twenty years. His teachers were all too busy to tell 

 him anything about it. And again he has to suffer be- 

 cause no one has told him. 



Then practical and financial questions arise. How 

 much should he charge for his services? How can he 

 collect his accounts? Who is liable, in complicated and 

 perplexing cases, for payment for his services ? How can 

 he, an expensively and thoroughly educated technician, 

 develop into a successful business man, as well? He has 

 the technical training for his work. How can he suc- 

 ceed as a practitioner? Has any one told him? No. 

 There is not a medical school in this country where any 

 instruction is given on how to practice medicine as a 

 business. Yet the most highly trained man will be a 

 failure and a dead loss to himself and society unless he 

 can make enough to support himself and family, pay his 

 bills, and save enough for postgraduate work and invest 

 enough to secure him for old age. Is any medical school 

 teaching medical economics ? If they are, it isn 't men- 

 tioned in the catalogues. Yet the business side of a pro- 

 fession is quite as important as the technical side, if one 

 is to be successful. The practical advice that the medical 

 student formerly got from his old preceptor has no 

 counterpart in the present-day medical curriculum. He 

 not only makes mistakes but he loses money because no 

 one has ever told him how to manage his business. 



After the young doctor has been in practice for any- ' 

 where from one to five years, some other doctor asks him 



