One of the difficulties of the average country doctor is his lack of facilities for the expert diagnosis of disease and for the care of patients who need to be kept under observation and given supervised care. Medical science has become highly specialized. The human body is so complicated and wonderful a mechanism that we no longer can expect any one man to be expert on all its ailments. If one desires to secure the best medical service, he goes to a large city hospital or a sanitarium, where various specialists can be consulted and where laboratory facilities are available for their aid. In the average village or country town both specialists and laboratories are lacking and the physician is dependent on his own knowledge and resources. The well-trained physician who appreciates his own limitations and that he cannot give many of his more difficult cases the care they ought to have, sends those who can afford it to the nearest hospital, and does the best he can for the others, but he is keenly aware that he cannot always give them the treatment they should have and he envies his city colleague who can take his patients to specialists for examination.
It is a fear of this professional isolation which causes the average young doctor to start his practice in the city where he has better facilities, and which is largely responsible for the small number of young doctors in rural counties. It is, of course, impossible to have a hospital in every hamlet, but it is possible to have a good hospital and laboratories at every county seat or small city center, so that there will be at least one such medical center in a county. Legislation has now been enacted in several states making it possible for counties to support a public hospital just as the larger cities have done for many years. Here clinics may be held from time to time, to which eminent specialists may be brought for the diagnosis of different cases, to the advantage of both patient and physician. It is quite impossible for a busy country doctor to maintain a private laboratory and to provide himself with all the expensive equipment for making examination and tests of blood, sputum, urine, for X-ray examinations, etc., but the hospital may have all this equipment at his service.