"Long Live the Vic!"

On the surface, it seemed last week that the doctors of Victoria Hospital in Kingston-on-Thames had lost their fight to evade the paternal embrace of Britain's National Health Service. They had wanted to keep their little (44-bed) building as a separate general hospital (TIME, Dec. 4). But N.H.S. insisted, for efficiency's sake, on converting it to a gynecological unit, which meant sending "the Vic's" general patients to the big, impersonal Kingston General Hospital.

In his Kingston office last week sat Dr. Frank Lake, 39, behind a desk piled high with 300 letters, nearly all containing money to help the displaced doctors in their latest scheme: to raise -L-50,000 for another, still smaller (20-bed) private hospital. There, patients would get the same care as under N.H.S. and on the same terms--that is, without charge. To do this, doctors would have to serve without pay. All 24 have agreed to do so. Now with the money coming in, Dr. Lake is confident. "I think we're going to succeed," he said. "The Victoria Hospital is dead--long live the Victoria Hospital."

The doctors felt that they were fighting to save the intimate, personal relationship between doctor and patient and between family doctor and specialist. "Look here," said Lake, "if I tell some old dear that she's got to go into hospital for a pretty sticky operation, and tell her that I'm going to be there in the operating room with the surgeon, holding her hand, and that I'll come and see her every day--that can make all the difference to her decision to give consent to the operation, and even to her recovery. Now the old Vic's closed I have to tell her: 'Here's a letter. Take it to the Kingston General Hospital and that's all I can do for you.'"

Many British doctors admired the Kingston rebels for their stand, and King's Physician Lord Horder volunteered to be one of their consultants. But others doubted whether the clock could be turned back. Said the Lancet: "Though this brave, if misguided, enterprise at Kingston may well succeed . . . though private money may be forthcoming for isolated endeavors of this sort, it will never again be found for a comprehensive hospital service."

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