On the surface, it seemed last week that the doctors of Victoria Hospital in Kingston-on-Thames had lost their fight to evade the paternal embrace of Britain's National Health Service. They had wanted to keep their little (44-bed) building as a separate general hospital (TIME, Dec. 4). But N.H.S. insisted, for efficiency's sake, on converting it to a gynecological unit, which meant sending "the Vic's" general patients to the big, impersonal Kingston General Hospital.
In his Kingston office last week sat Dr. Frank Lake, 39, behind a desk piled high with 300 letters, nearly all containing money to help the displaced doctors in...