In England

"As a matter of fact few persons can have had more or better doctor friends than I. Indeed that is why my utterances have been so well informed."

Jauntily, endearing egotist George

Bernard Shaw penned the above statement -- plunged straightway into a letter to the London Times wherein he scored the General Medical Council of England* as "a trade union of the worst type--namely, a type in which entry into the trade and the right to remain in it are at the mercy of the union."

After asserting that this body "enjoys powers which no political ruler in the civilized world would dream of claiming," Mr. Shaw proceeded to wax indignant against the Council for blacklisting not only osteopaths but "any physician who dares to assist an osteopath as his anesthetist."

The letter then recounted how the patients of Herbert Barker, famed "bone setter," "suffered terrible agony under his treatment" until a practitioner, Dr. Axham, though realizing that he would incur the anger of the General Medical Council thought it his duty to offer his services as an anesthetist. . . . The Council found him guilty of 'infamous professional conduct' and deprived him of the right to practice medicine. . . .

"Herbert Barker, for the cures he effected among War wounded soldiers, received the honor of knighthood and obtained practical, if irregular, recognition of his skill while Dr. Axham, now a very old man, being deprived of his means of livelihood, has been in considerable financial straits. . . .

"The General Medical Council (privately) holds that the four famous surgeons who petitioned the Prime Minister to have Sir Herbert knighted, in recognition of his skill as a great manipulative surgeon, are guilty of 'infamous professional conduct' in which they were abetted by the King. . . . But it does not act on its views because the King and his advisors are not so helpless as Axham was."

Mr. Shaw went on to say:

"Leaving that aside, I have my own interests and grievances as a citizen. My wife suffered from laming traumatic dislocation for eight years. Thanks to the obsolete training maintained by the General Medical Council, registered surgeons were unable to correct it. They did not pretend to. Their final verdict was, 'You must go to Barker.' But the General Medican Council said, 'If you go to that blackleg you shall howl for it, as we will ruin any man who dares administer an anesthetic.' And in fact the operation, which was completely successful, was performed without anesthetic, though I hasten to add that this was the effect of my wife's curiosity.

"Later on, in an accident I displaced one of my own bones rather badly and again, though nothing could exceed the kindness of the registered medical gentlemen on the spot, they were unable to replace it for want of perfectly well known technique which every qualified surgeon should have at his fingers' ends. It took me ten days to get to Birmingham, where an American doctor of osteopathy, also classed as a blackleg by the General Medical Council, set me right after 75 minutes of skilled manipulation. . . .

"No wonder I am overwhelmed with requests from medical societies in all the medical schools of London to lecture to them on the situation. But I have nothing more to say than I have already said often clearly enough and I simply dare not use the language that the ablest leaders of the profession pour out on it."

*Official arbiter of "ethical standards" among English doctors.