What Should the Physician Do? Various Remedies Proposed for Existing Conditions—Too Many Doctors in the Land—Not Enough Patients to Go Around—What the Medical Colleges Are Doing—Over 5,000 Doctors Made Every Year in the Strictly Ethical Schools Alone—Temptations of Young Physicians—What Men Like Dr. Evans and Dr. King Have to Say—Prominent Practitioners Endorse Division of Fees as an Act of Justice—Prof. George Burman Foster on the Profession as Allied to Business—No Reason Why There Should Be Any Distinction Between the Two 195 CHAPTER XVI. 8Corporation Doctors. Evils of the Contract Plan—How It Injures the Regular Practitioner and the Contract Doctor Himself—Miserly Economy by Corporations—Disastrous Competition Among Physicians—Life Insurance Examiners and Their Lack of Business Sense—Moral as Well as Medical Honesty Dwarfed by the Corporation System—Contract Doctors Expected to Hide the Truth to Retain Their Jobs—Beggarly Salaries Paid by Corporations—Practice Wrongfully Diverted from Doctors Entitled to It—Collusion Between Corporation Doctors and Claim Agents—Sick and Injured Employees Often Induced to Sign Away Their Rights by Misrepresentation or Intimidation—The Drawbacks of Promiscuous Fraternizing 207 9 PREFACE There are some methods explained in this book which the author does not endorse. They are printed because they are necessary to a thorough understanding of the subject. Newspapers publish reports of murders, but this does not imply endorsement of the crimes. Aside from these features there are many things which the practicing physician may read and follow to his advantage. The introductory chapter by Dr. Lydston will be found to be of special interest. THE AUTHOR. 11 CHAPTER I   MEDICINE AS A BUSINESS By G. Frank Lydston, M.D. As a general proposition it is safe to assert that the practice of medicine from a business standpoint is a failure. The successful exceptions merely prove the rule. It is also safe to assume that the elements of financial non-success are cumulative in their action—a fact that is easily proved by hospital and dispensary statistics. The practitioner of medicine, like every man who relies on his own hand and brain for a livelihood, is entitled to a bit of earth that he and his may call their own, at least a modest competence, and a well-earned rest when his sun begins to set and the twilight of his life approaches. How many doctors are in a position to enjoy or even render less awesome their twilight days? As city doctors are all supposed to be rich—at least by the public, that does all it can to prevent their becoming so—it would be interesting to know what proportion of them, even in metropolitan medical centers, own their own homes or have property investments. A far smaller proportion than is just, I fancy.