A J Cronin’s famous novel, The Citadel, a story of a coal mining company doctor’s struggle to balance scientific integrity with his obligations to his employers, incited the establishment of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. It exposed the inequity and incompetence of medical practice at the time. In the novel, Cronin advocated a free public health service to defeat the wiles of those doctors who "raised guinea-snatching and the bamboozling of patients to an art form".
Dr Cronin and Aneurin Bevan, the British Labour Party cabinet minister who devised and introduced the “free at the point of delivery” National Health Service (NHS)—at a time when the UK was flat broke and deep in debt as a consequence of the war—had both worked at the Tredegar Cottage Hospital in Wales, which was the basis for the NHS. Now, although the UK is much wealthier than it was then, the Tory government is trying its best to undermine the NHS prior to selling it off piecemeal to the private sector. There is no reason or excuse for it except doctrinaire capitalist politics.
- Refer to Wikipedia, sv "A J Cronin" and "Aneurin Bevan" for more information.
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