Consequently there is no alternative but to apply to the Poor Law authorities, who, under certain circumstances, provide treatment for a period of two weeks in the workhouse infirmary. The whole system is radically wrong. When the wife of an artisan becomes depressed after confinement, surely it is cruel in the extreme to make her a pauper and send her to the workhouse infirmary, pending a decision as to whether she is insane or no. It is obvious in such a case that this course will not be adopted until the last possible moment, and consequently much valuable time is lost. Every practitioner will be able to call to mind patients travelling steadily towards insanity in unfavourable surroundings. This question is brought even more prominently before consulting physicians, especially those interested in nervous and mental diseases.” (_Op. cit._, p. 42.) In the words of the report of the Medico-Psychological Association:— “The present system, which compels all persons, except those able to pay adequately for their maintenance, to apply to the Poor Law authorities in order to secure treatment, is unsatisfactory and unjust. In doubtful and undeveloped cases temporary care can be given only in workhouses or Poor Law infirmaries, which, with very few exceptions, lack proper facilities for treatment. _A system which artificially creates paupers in order to obtain medical treatment necessarily acts as a deterrent, so that too frequently there is serious and even disastrous delay._”[52] This is not exactly locking the stable door after the horse has gone; it is double-locking him thoroughly, expensively and often unnecessarily, in someone else’s stable. Let us, for a moment, compare this state of affairs with that existing in the case of tuberculosis. Nobody now believes that the scientific way of treating this disease consists in waiting until the patient has become a positive danger to others, and then locking him up. This point needs no elaboration. But another fact in this connection should not be forgotten. The tubercular patient usually seeks the doctor _of his own free will_, often obtaining treatment in a relatively early stage of the disease.