History of Scottish Medicine

Wed, Sep 20th 2023 at 12:40 pm - 2:00 pm

Dr Krishna

Club members please log in for more information.

The speaker this week was one of the Club’s own members, Krishna Krishnaswamy, a doctor, now retired, who hails from India and, after 5/6 years in England, set up his own GP practice in Glenrothes. Today, when the NHS is under such pressure whether from inadequacy of funding, staff shortages, discontent over pay or the growth of private medicine, Krishna’s topic could not have been more appropriate. He gave a quick resumé of the history of medical care in Scotland prior to the founding of the NHS. During the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries the provision of health care was governed by the Poor Law Acts which provided for minimum care, mainly for the poor, while the more affluent frequently received private care in their own homes. Increasingly there was an awareness that government should take a greater role, so, in 1913, the Highlands and Islands Medical Service was set up. The Cathcart Report of 1936 envisaged a completely new health service, with separate GP service attached. These ideas were given impetus through the publication of ‘The Citadel’ by AJCronin whose ideas and foresight were vital for the creation of the NHS itself. While progress was interrupted by WW2, the Beveridge Report was nonetheless published in 1942, setting out a vision for a welfare state. In this ‘’want, ignorance, squalor, idleness and disease" would be eradicated. In 1946 Aneurin Bevan introduced measures to nationalise all hospitals, remove maternity and infant care from local authorities and exercise control over GPs. The NHS was born……Krishna outlined some of the significant developments in medicine, decade by decade, highlighting the use of penicillin, vaccine for polio and diphtheria, oral contraception, the use of beta blockers, MRI scans. Alan Constable thanked the speaker for this fascinating and timely talk.