DOCTOR

In the medical profe ion there are four cla es of practitioners, the family doctors or general practitioners, consulting physicians, erage surgeons and specialists on the eye, throat, etc., who, like dentists, confine themselves to one part of the body. Each household should have one good family doctor, whom they always consult when ill, and one dentist to whom they pay at loast an annual visit. The family doctor should decide when a consulting physician or surgeon is required, and also whom to call in, though the patient or his friends may if they desire a second opinion tell the family doctor so,and mez also say whom they prefer. It is much better, however, to leave this to the doctor, as the fashionable physician of the day is not always the best man, but merely the one whom attendance on some celebrity has brought into note. The family doctor, on the other hand, has usually two or three consultants, whose opinion he values highly and whom he knows to be good. It is important that no doctor be consulted during the attendance of the family doctor without his Sacre ielae: as to do 60 is to commit a breach of confidence for which there is no excuse. In the event of the doctor not giving satisfaction, he may be told that his services aro no longer required, and tho patient is then free to call in any other dockins chooses. The hours of consultation for a family doctor at his house are usually up till eleven in the morning and again in the evening, whilst consultants may be seen by appointment usually in the mornings only. The rest of the day is esr So by going his rounds in the case of the doctor, and by work at the hospitals and learned societies in the case of the consultant. Consultants do not usually visit patients at their own houses except in consultation with the family doctor. The fees of the family doctor range from half a crown to half a guinea a visit, according to tho house rent of the patient, and night visits are usually charged double. The eo for consultation at the doctor's pee is usually le , and where two or more invalids are present in the same house a reduction is made. Vaccination is from five shillings upwards, and midwifery from one guinea upwards, two or three guineas being the common fee. The consultant's fee is usually arranged by the family doctor; at his consulting rooms it is usually two guineas for the first visit and a guinea afterwards; for operations the fee ranges from ten to a hundred guineas, according to the nature of the operation and the experience of the surgeon. The consultant a ped at the end of the consultation, the doctor usually yearly or yearly. For those who cannot afford medical advice or who cannot afford the unexpected expense of an operation, the hospitals are open and entrance on the recommendation of the family doctor is readily obtained, but the public as well as the doctor ought to see that this charity is not abused. The choice of a family doctor should be made chiefly by the recommendation of frionds. Failing this [s. 354]