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Show Lack oi Trcsisted Doctors Affects Farmers' Health WASHINGTON, D. C. Rural areas even with their sunlight and fresh air, freedom from industrial indus-trial dust and fumes, and absence of dense crowds where diseases can spread are losing the health advantage they once held over the cities, says the agricultural department. depart-ment. The scarcity of rural doctors is reflected by a survey showing that before the war, in the thousand most rural and isolated counties of the nation, there were so few medical men that each had to serve an average of 1,700 persons, while in the larger cities there was a doctor doc-tor for each 650 persons. During the war, the rural average aver-age dropped as low as one doctor for 3,000 to 5,000 persons, because rural doctors almost everywhere exceeded ex-ceeded their quotas in entering the armed forces. Doctors and dentists, the report says, tend to shun rural counties because be-cause they feel they can make a better living in cities and have greater great-er access to modern hospitals, technical tech-nical equipment and professional contacts. The rural shortage also reflects the department says, a failure of many states to provide educational opportunities for doctors. It says that almost half of all young doctors now come from medical schools in five major industrial states, while 18 states, mostly rural, turn out no medical graduates from their schools. In World War II, youths from farms showed considerably more physical defects than those from cities. |