The Frustration of State Medicine 1880–1899 (original) (raw)

The aim of this Department has always been to secure a basis of scientific principle for the sanitary practice of the country; to found recommendations for the maintenance of health in the community upon the teachings of physiology and medicine; and to conduct investigations into disease and its causes by the light of the best contemporary knowledge of pathology. By firm adherence to this method Mr. Simon came to direct a medical department which, while fulfilling important duties to the Government, had the complete confidence of sanitary workers throughout England and abroad, and brought the knowledge of hygienic science to a high point of public usefulness. It would be a disaster to sanitary progress as weU as a serious misfortune to the Board, if your Medical Officer should, by reason of his utter preoccupation in routine business, lose sight of the true aim of his office, and cease to guide his Department by the only trustworthy principles of sanitary action.-Dr. George Buchanan to Sir Charles DiLke, 17 November 1883. 1 This investigation was supported in part by assistance from the Weilcome Trust and by USPHS Grant No. 5-F1-MH-23, 115-02 from the National Institute of Mental Health. I am grateful to Dr. Richard Thorne-Thome, of Weybridge, Surrey, for information about his father; to Lord Balemo, of the House of Cockburn, Balemo, Midlothian, for the use of his Memoir of the Buchanan Family, and in particular ofGeorge Buchanan, 1831-1895, (printed privately, Aberdeen University Press, 1941); and to Sir Arthur MacNalty, for his early advice and for the background material made available in his 'History of State Medicine in England',