The religious racket has, been exploded by Socialists since the days of Marx; but the more scientific racket, the medical “business” has received little attention, in spite of the fact that it is now generally recognised as the strongest and most militant trade (or professional) union in the country.
Millions of pounds are daily spent on therapeutics (curing disease) but scarcely anything is spent in comparison on prophylactics (preventing disease), for the simple economic reason that it is far more profitable to pursue, therapeutics. If too much attention was devoted to prophylactics it might render therapeutics redundant by “killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.” Doctors and hospitals must have sick people, and millions of them, or go out of business.
The workings of the medical profession provide a wonderful example of the economic factor in determining events and culture. Perhaps in this respect it is even more clearly demonstrable than in the case of the spiritual counterpart in religion. In this country there are more doctors and hospitals per head of population than in most countries, and strange to say, there is also a vast and increasing number of sick or ailing people. The same is the case with dentists; in spite of the fact that they are to be seen everywhere, and in spite of the widespread use of the tooth brush and dentifrice, the state of the teeth of the average English person is appalling, when compared to those of many primitive tribes who have no dentists, no tooth brushes and no dentifrice. In fact it would appear superficially that the more dentists, and care of the teeth, the worse is the final result.
Strange to relate with all the efforts of the medical profession and all their scientific research, Cancer, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Nephritis, Rheumatism. Nervous Diseases, Occupational Neurosis, and a host of other complaints, continue to increase yearly, which clearly indicates that something is radically wrong somewhere.
Capitalism regulates, the channel in which medical money goes, and stipulates broadly how it shall be spent; “for the hand that pays the piper, calls the tune.” Surgeons who can get, (or extract from the patient), 100 guineas for a certain operation, are always lurking for possible clients ; and why not, for their success depends very largely upon how many they find. Would anybody pay a surgeon for saving them from an operation? They certainly would not be prepared to pay the same fees.
Drug manufacturers, and patent medicine vendors, make enormous profits on certain chemical preparations, and do not fail to take full advantage of the power of advertising through the medium of those who handle and prescribe the drugs. Only too often quite worthless and harmful drugs are applauded as having health-giving properties, and statements made about them which could never be justified.
The late Lord Trent (formerly Sir Jesse Boot), owner and controller of about 1,000 chemists shops which hears his name, was bed ridden with Rheumatism, and had to be wheeled about in a bath-chair for many years of his life before he died, whilst his shops sold dozens of different chemical preparations for alleviating rheumatism.
A lady who is quite a public figure, owns or used to own, a once much advertised slimming product, and yet she herself regularly tipped the scales at 18 stone. Just imagine this 18 stone of beautiful womanhood ; what about a shovelful of her own slimming mixture for breakfast? But business is business, especially in anything connected with medicine and health, so why worry?
Today certain drugs are making fortunes for the companies behind the medical profession. Just think of the amount of advertising the B.B.C. gives to Penicillin, Streptomycin and Pheno-barbitone. Almost every day the B.B.C. has to announce that some doctor has carelessly mislaid quantities of the latter, thus giving further free advertising to these drugs, incidentally, who says the B.B.C. don’t advertise?
Blood squirting (hypodermic injections of serum), is popular today because apart from their simplicity, and certain medical reasons, these, practises, are enormously profitable, both to doctors and the companies responsible for the serum preparation. An old horse, of little use for its traction power, might fetch about £10 in the cats’ meat market (although horse flesh has many other uses than for cats’ meat). If the horse is deliberately given a dose of a disease resembling smallpox or diphtheria, it can be made capable of producing many times its cats’ meat value by producing suitable serum, at wholesale prices.
The enormous amount of injections done during the war on soldiers—where the men lined up before the doctor who did one after the other just like shelling peas, till the needle got blunt and was thrown away— was not done for nothing, nor even without profit. Manufacturing chemists were reaping thousands out of it.
Medical research under capitalism has got itself into an absurd scientific entanglement. Shaw’s “Doctor’s Dilemma,” and Cronin’s “Citadel,” only touch on aspects of this contradictory muddle. After millions of pounds had been spent on Cancer research (and the figures for cancer mortality steadily rising), the medical profession were instrumental in causing the government to pass the Cancer Laws of 1939, to prevent anybody except a qualified medical man from treating cancer. It would appear that the large amount of criticism they were receiving at this, time had to be silenced, and freedom of action as well as freedom of criticism was debarred to the public.
It is not always those who have the biggest purses who receive the best treatment. Sometimes the more money you have the more operations and specialists’ fees, and subsequently a quicker route to the grave. This was the trouble with the one-time world famous film idol, Rudolph Valentino, who wasted his money on medical attention to no purpose. Doctors are specialists in the art of knowing how to bleed (financially) those who have too much (pecuniary) blood. Kings and presidents, Lords and business magnates have to watch their step where doctors are concerned, as do also the working class. Even Karl Marx was helped to an untimely grave before his life work was completed through advertised chemical dope. Engels observed when Marx was obviously dying, that his body was literally full of patent medicines.
It is regrettable that so many workers have little real interest in health matters, and consequently become such easy victims to medical frauds, and tyranny. Doctors thrive through the advertisements for medicines, cigarettes, alcoholic drinks, doped foods and the health-destroying habits that follow their use. Why should the medical profession endeavour to educate the workers on these topics, and lose them as potential clients as a result? Is there any wonder why the doctors and specialists confine their nomenclature to technical terms derived mostly from the. Latin: or Greek, and pharmaceutical abbreviations that few can understand. It is not easy either to climb into the profession nor to understand its workings; those in it see to that.
“It’s your blood they’re after.” The recent blood transfusion campaign, coming at a time when it is extremely difficult to obtain blood-making foods of the right nature, quality and quantity, is enough to make us sit back and do some thinking. Every day appeals are made on the radio that blood donors are urgently needed, and thousands have responded, to what they consider a humane cause.
At one time in capitalism’s youth, we were told that disease was due to too much blood. When the public were convinced of this doctrine a new line of business was established in removing this surplus. The barber-surgeons were brought into existence for the purpose of taking a pint of blood from all comers who were sick (plus of course a fee for services rendered). The fact that many people treated by these methods were suffering from anaemia and afterwards died, and many others through lack of antiseptic precautions became infected and succumbed, did not worry the barber-surgeons much. Today we can get our blood taken for nothing, and by the latest scientific methods. Tomorrow we might be paid for giving it, but that all depends on how many “blood blacklegs” there are, and also the degree of health consciousness of the masses. No longer is the theory held, “let us take some of your surplus blood and you will get health,” but rather, “let us give you some more blood and you will gain health, or have your life saved.” A curious biological reverse !
Of course there are thousands of street and industrial accidents today that need immediate supplies of blood. But this is not the whole story, there are also many hospital accidents, for modern surgeons, with the aid of anti-septic surgery and anaesthetics, regularly take risks that but a few decades ago they could, or would, never have taken. There is more surgery today than ever before, and there is going to be more tomorrow, especially if a third world war occurs. Consequently a blood donor campaign becomes necessary to capitalist society. Surgery is a very profitable department of science and those that are in it intend that it shall remain so. These strange changes in doctrine become practical politics to the high priests of the medical profession.
Capitalism has long ago converted the cow into a milk producing machine, and the hen into an egg producing apparatus; it now seeks to convert the worker into a blood producing factory, and this has got to be done on a restricted diet.
Horace Jarvis
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