The BC Adventure 25
By jeand
- 1355 reads
March 25 , 1922
Dear Mums,
We invited the Scotts to tea on the weekend and also included Mr and Mrs. Inglis and Fred Jones.
We are anticipating a visit by the Bishop on the weekend. I haven't told you much about our little church. St. Marks. It's small and simple but very pleasant.
I have been doing some hospital visiting with Beryl. The hospital is called Lady Minto after the wife of the Governor General of BC who funded it. There will soon be a new wing on it.
I also went with her to a Lecture on World peace by Sir Philip Gibbon – and we went to see a play by GB Shaw, the Doctor's Dilemma.
The play is about the moral dilemmas created by limited medical resources, and the conflicts between the demands of private medicine as a business and a vocation.
The new doctor has developed a revolutionary new cure for tuberculosis. However, his private medical practice, with limited staff and resources, can only treat ten patients at a time. From a selection of fifty patients he has selected ten he believes he can cure and who, he believes, are most worthy of being saved. However, when he is approached by a young woman, with a deadly ill husband, he admits he can, at a stretch, save one more patient, but that the individual in question must be shown to be most worthy of being saved. However, the situation is complicated when an old friend and colleague reveals, he too, needs treatment.
What with that and bridge parties and dances, life here is never dull.
Love,
Gwenllian
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Comments
I've still got a chunk to
I've still got a chunk to catch up on in this series, but this piece shows how some things don't change. Money and health - the never-ending problem.
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A good way of getting the
A good way of getting the point across, by acting out the problems of limited resources in the medical profession. I wonder how much the doctor's mind changed when it affected an old friend and colleague.
I agree, times haven't really changed in the medical profession.
Jenny.
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Having grown up with the NHS,
Having grown up with the NHS, we don't think about where the money comes from, and as new and very expensive treatments become possible, there is vying for money and some areas have less 'voice', and also as violence and problems with alcohol use get worse, resources get more strained. Rhiannon
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