ABSTRACT
Some of the most painful adjustments that contemporary society has to make have to do with the simple human needs of health. Waste and carelessness with human lives have certainly characterized not only nature and warfaring herds; they are still found to an incredible degree in the mode of living of peaceful modern civilizations. Only the socially most disastrous diseases, plague, and contagion have been fully recognized as responsibilities of the community. The other needs of health work have barely become organized: in some countries as public health measures, in others as private medicine; for some purposes as philanthropic organizations and for others as cooperative group medicine. Sometimes the needs are just neglected. The demarcation of the various forms of medical services has been neither planned nor systematic. The dilemma is that the disorder is stabilized. To some degree it represents vested interests. It also represents sets of attitudes, values, and prestige considerations that are just as difficult to change. In many cases agencies for medical care have been created by such great personal sacrifices for humanitarian reasons that it seems ungrateful to declare the very system obsolete. Yet such is the judgment that will be passed by everyone who can look at health needs not only with human sympathy but also with cold objectivity.
