In a meeting of the Section of Epidemiology and State Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine in Great Britain a symposium was held during February 1939 on the proper sphere of state medicine. In the opening statement, by Dr. Alfred Cox, former secretary of the British Medical Association, he pointed out that even with all his experience in this matter he was unable to accept the solution that the state should make medicine free to all. Some of his statements merit particular quotation; thus Dr. Cox said:
In a world which is becoming more and more machine made and mechanized, in which the individual tends to become more and more swamped in the mass, it seems to me a good thing, indeed an imperative duty, whenever we can, to keep our profession, and the rights and privileges and welfare of the individual, free from the shackles of standardization—a condition