Cases have been published recently of gallant work done by country doctors who, without hope of reward, have performed self-sacrificing deeds in the service of suffering humanity. Opportunities rarely occur to praise such men as these, the most truly altruistic workers in remote places of the land.

The quiet country doctors
   Of many a country town,
Whose lives are spent to service bent,
   With scant hope of renown -
Those sturdy country doctors,
   That walk the healer's way,
At beck and call of one and all
   That pain be smoothed away.

Those patient country doctors,
   That journey day and night
By country roads to far abodes
   To ease some sufferer's plight;
Thro' fire and flood and tempest
   They make their pilgrimage
To bring release and healing peace,
   The comforters of age.

Those modern country doctors,
   They do not advertsie;
Surcease they bring for suffering
   And hope to pain-filled eyes.
These be their ends to be man's friends,
   And so they shape and plan,
Divorced from greed to serve man's need,
   And give their lives to man.

Those quiet country doctors,
   Unsung, unknown to fame,
Refusing none what may be done
   In skilful healing's name -
Philosophers, friends, mentors,
   Thro' pain and death and birth,
And who shall say that such as they
   Are not salt of the earth?

"Den"
Herald, 16 July 1934, p6 and The Queenslander, 9 August 1934, p33