Genre:

Proceedings, Spoof

Subjects:

Medical Treatment, Medical Practitioners, Class, Industry, Commerce, Homeopathy, Quackery, Political Economy

    A spoof report of a meeting of poor law medical officers, held at the 'Malthus Arms', at which members discussed how pauper patients could enjoy greater medical relief. The chairman, Mr Nightbell, concludes from a report in the Standard and a calculation of expenditure on medical treatments and shoe leather, that the salary of one poor law medical officer, Frederick Smith Garlick, is desperately low. The suggestion of reducing a medical officer's expenditure by regulating the 'system of diet' of the poor is dismissed as having been tried before in the poor law unions. Mr Probin cautiously suggests using homeopathic remedies to reduce costs, a resolution that is seconded by Mr Scruples, who is forced to consider the application of homeopathy to 'Poor Law practice by the homeopathic amount of his salary'.