Doctors’ concerns in 2004 look remarkably similar to those they were expressing more than a century ago
Doctors often yearn for the good old times when governments didn’t interfere and economic security was matched by an unfettered freedom to practise their skills, but did these times ever exist? Delving into the Australian Medical Journal (AMJ) from 1870 to 1879 suggests that the medicopolitical issues confronting the profession have changed very little. Medicine today is more sophisticated, but the politics is not and has lost a certain character-forming robustness.
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I thank Professor John Pearn for his advice and access to his article on Mr Beaney, a leading but controversial surgeon of the time.