Medicine: Professional Thunderhead

The majority of U. S. doctors last year decided that they would continue to treat the poor for nothing. But an articulate minority want the Government to pay the medical bills of the indigent, also the expenses of medical schools, research institutions and hospitals. When the American Medical Association meets in San Francisco June 13, this doctors’ quarrel, now a distant thunderhead, is expected to break into a real storm.

Last week, when the annual convention of the American College of Physicians met in Manhattan, some preliminary rumbles were heard, drowning out the purely scientific aspects of the gathering. Speaking obliquely, as doctors often do, the retiring president of the Physicians, Professor James Howard Means of Harvard, urged his adherents “to develop an enlightened opposition party within the democracy of the A.M.A.” His adherents took this to mean that Dr. Means was in favor of ousting the elected heads of the A.M.A. But Dr. Means merely meant that he feared that those leaders may prevent his ideas from being discussed at San Francisco.