Lets begin with a picture.

  He must not have been more than thirty years old. The oval face, devoid of those wrinkles of age, the well-turfed and black hair, and his still complete though brown set of teeth supported this assessment. All he had for clothing was a piece of cloth with some words written on it. It must have been one of those cloth-posters used but now abandon by ‘show-biz’ promoters. Across his neck was yet another cloth which bore our national colors of green and white. His feet were naked – just as they came from their creator. In one hand he had an empty tin. He talked ceaselessly and in a disordered fashion. The other free hand emphasized his spoken words and gesture. As he talked, he gazed at you as if you were responsible for his pathetic condition. He looked redeemable, though. There are many of his type in various urban centers.

  Beggars! They are in every conceivable place. At the bank, the supermarket, the church, the mosque, the post office – there you will meet them. Before you know it, the more healthy ones besiege you for alms almost to the point of assault. Surely, there is no rationale in giving alms to someone who is physically stronger than you are and who, from all indication, can and should work and fend for himself. Some others are feeble and unfortunately handicapped. Women and young girls constitute a sizeable number of these healthy beggars. Some are nursing mothers and one wonders who their husbands are. Conception by Mr Nobody, perhaps. The young girls in this category are the mother-beggars of tomorrow. But tell me; can’t the society be spared the human waste?

  The disease afflicting Western societies have undergone dramatic changes. In the course of a century, so many mass killers have vanished that two-third of all deaths are now associated with the disease of old age. Those who die young are more often than not, the victims of accidents, violence and suicide.

  These changes in public health are generally equated with progress and attributed to more or better medical care. In fact there is no evidence of any direct relationship between changing disease pattern and the so-called progress of medicine.

  The impotence of medical services to change life expectancy and the insignificance of much contemporary clinical care in the curing of diseases are all obvious, well documented but well suppressed.

  Neither the proportion of doctors in a population nor the quality of the clinical tools at the disposal not the number of hospital beds is a casual factor in the striking changes in disease patterns. The new techniques available to recognize and treat such conditions as pernicious anaemia and hypertension, or correct congenital malformations by surgical interventions, increase our understanding of disease but do not reduce its incidence. The fact that there are more doctors where certain diseases have become rare has little to do with their ability to control or eliminate them. It simply means that doctors, more than other professionals, determine where they work. Consequently, they tend to gather where the climate is healthy, where the water is clean and where people work and can pay for their services.