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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Many years ago, I lived in a trailer for a few months. My health went to hell and the experience was nightmarish.

While living there, I swore to myself I would never live in a trailer again and stated "I would rather live in a tent." Which I did, in actual fact, do for some years at a later date.

I got healthier while sleeping in a tent and desperately poor.

Doctors used to take their little black bag and do house calls. This allowed them to know a lot of things about your life without asking and to factor that into their diagnosis and treatment.

I think medicine is worse off for no longer doing that and I think Sick Building Syndrome is much more prevalent than people realize.

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I haven’t thought about the context gained by a house call before, but that’s a very good point. Thanks for sharing.

Doctors still do house calls, but if you’re poor then you’re lucky to be seeing a doctor at all. Neither of these things have changed.

Unless you live in a country with universal healthcare.

There is no relation between universal healthcare and house visits. I live in a country with universal healthcare where house calls don't exist.

I believe the parent commenter was noting that with universal healthcare the relation to poverty and not being to see the doctor was not longer a problem.

That is not completely true either, most countries have a form of free basic care: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...

Here in the UK I didn’t think house calls exist, but then my wife got a severe chest infection while she was pregnant on a weekend. I called the NHS help line, and there was a doctor with us in 4 hours.

There’s always a price.

When I was kid in Germany the doctor would do housecalls when I had fever. These days I can imagine this done only for very old people, either in Germany or the US.

They did in Sweden as wheel until the early 90s

* as well

Never going to get used to double checking what I type on the phone =(

In Denmark they did a housecall for my daughter when she was about 1 year old and it was possible she had pneumonia and it was a weekend.

on edit: I remember when I was living in Germany about the age of 7 I had a fever of 40 and the doctor did a housecall.

My Dad was a doctor, so technically we got a house call everyday. But the reality was that we never saw a doctor at all. If we needed a physical for school sports my dad would just look at us and say "Eh, you look healthy" and sign it. I was in my early 30s before I got a real checkup from a doctor for the first time since I was born.

Did your dad also administer immunizations himself?

Actually, yes. Also, whenever one of us needed a medication he would just write the prescription for what we needed. The only exceptions were if one of us broke a limb. Then he'd take us to a friend doctor who specialized in that sort of thing to fix us up.

Modern medicine in general is very good at treating symptoms but unfortunately focuses way too much on symptoms and not enough on living conditions, be it buildings, nutrition or other factors. A lot of buildings in the US have terrible air quality and bad drinking water quality. Add to that the unhealthy lifestyles people are living it's no wonder they get sick.

Unfortunately it seems kind of taboo to point this out to people. I know people who are 100 pound or more overweight and are getting back surgeries and knee and ankle replacements. The rational thing to do would be to tell them to lose weight first to reduce the strain on the joints. Or if somebody needs antidepressants maybe it would be a good idea to reduce workplace stress.

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