THE DOCTOR'S WIFE
Sta,—If Janus knew the facts, he would realise that the formation of this League imparts a touch of tragedy rather than comedy to the controversy. The public does not know or understand the doctor's or his wife's day's work ; only by living, not for a day but for weeks, in a busy doctor's house could Janus get to know them. Day in, day out, and too often during the greater part of the night, all the year round, except for the holiday fortnight in the summer, both the doctor and his wife are hard ar work, utilising every minute of the day, till late at night. Seldom are they permitted to have any leisure-time, or a meal, without interruption by a message declared urgent or by the telephone bell in its commanding insistence. To be readily available at all times, night and day, the doctor Vorks at and from his home ; he cannot use a lock-up office, or employ labour because of the nature and irregular hours of his employment.
After forty years and more of busy medical practice, I claim to know the truth of the matter, and have nothing but sympathy with the doctor's wife. Her grievance is real, her position dreadful ; her life, slaving morn- ing, noon and night, is no life at all. She lives in an atmosphere of hurry and nervous tension now that the public has become nervously excitable, irritable in temper and impatient. This being so, with the anticipation of a threefold increase in the numbers to be attended to, if and when the Medical Service starts, with no clinical centres in sight, not even temporary centres, I do not wonder that .the wives protest and feel that they cannot continue as before. They find that it is almost impossible to get any domestic help ; even the " domestic " is known to avoid employment in the doctor's house ; so there is no help for the harassed wife as things are. The partitioned hut in the garden might to some extent solve the problem of trampling numbers, though only during consulting-hours.
Of all members of the community the doctor and his conscientious wife come nearest to Janus's "achieved perpetual motion."
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