To commemorate the semi-centennial of the UK's national health service (NHS) in 1998, The Lancet published a full-page reproduction of Sir Luke Fildes' painting The Doctor under the heading NHS at 50. It seemed to capture a message that for more than a century has been attached to the image: here was a visual embodiment of the physician's devotion to patients, and, in this instance, the state's commitment to guarding the health of the people. From the perspective of a historically informed American eye, however, the choice was staggeringly ironic. For The Doctor had a pivotal role in blocking the creation of a counterpart to the NHS in the USA. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was under a banner graced with this image that the American Medical Association (AMA) successfully led the battle against universal government health insurance. Widely circulated during the early Cold War, the image became a lightning rod for clashing conceptions of the medical profession as an American institution, the doctor-patient relationship, and the ways that access to health care should define the nation.
...MoreDescription On Sir Luke Fildes' painting The Doctor, used as a symbol for the National Health Service of the United Kingdom and in opposition to a similar national health plan in the United States.
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