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The Suffolk County Medical Club. 
their own clubs, and be only guided by the counsel of men who 
can bring practical experience to their assistance. 
The poet says : — 
" Tis to thy rules, 0 Temperance, that we owe 
All pleasures that from health or strength can flow ; 
Vigour of body, purity of mind, 
Unclouded reason, sentiment refined." 
Every village with a population, at any rate, of 200 should have 
its reading-room ; and if by so small an effort the minds and 
bodies of the residents in rural districts can be refined and im- 
proved, the work of educational and temperance reform will be 
lessened at a very small cost of money, and of labour. 
Oaliley Parle, Scole. 
XVIII.— The Suffolk County Medical Club. By Sir E. C. 
Kerrison, Bart. 
The object of this Club is to enable benefit members to 
provide themselves and their families with medical attendance 
and medicine during sickness. Benefit clubs provide medical 
attendance for men only, but it is well known that women and 
children are more liable to illness than men. This club is 
intended to remedy this omission, and not in any way to inter- 
fere with established benefit societies. 
The first stepping-stone to pauperism is an application for 
the doctor. It is now not so often granted by Boards of 
Guardians as it used to be, but when it is granted, in nine 
cases out of ten, meat and porter or wine are ordered by the 
medical man, and the rates are burthened not only with the 
ordinary maintenance of the families, but with the extras which 
the doctor considers right to order, and thus one family after 
another become paupers. 
It is not to be wondered at that an honest labouring man 
should seek to obtain the services of a doctor free of cost, when 
his wages will not enable him to pay a doctor's bill. It can 
only be by numbers collected together in a club of this descrip- 
tion, that the charges made by medical men can be brought 
within the means of the people. Every man or woman, whose 
earnings do not exceed twenty shillings per week, or any maid- 
servant, whose wages do not exceed SI. a year, can become a 
member. 
The rules of this club will give to any man or woman an 
opportunity of choosing any doctor who has joined the club, 
