THE COMPLAINT FROM CAMBRIDGE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 837, 8 June 1910, Page 4

THE COMPLAINT FROM CAMBRIDGE.

The Minister in. charge of tho Public Health Department has been good .'enough to make some reference to the letter published 'in our columns yesterday from a patient in the Government Sanatorium at Cambridge. Mil. Buddo, however, appears to labour under the imprcssion.tbat the complaint made regarding the economies practised and the new duties consequently imposed on patients al; the sanatorium amounts' to nothing more than the personal grievance of a single patient. He even appeared to think that the letter may have emanated' from someone' who was not even a patient at all. The Minister is quite in orrov in this respect. The communication received at this office from Cambridge was not. only written by an inmate of the sanatorium, but was endorsed by fifteen or sixteen other patients. The Minister will notice on perusing the letter again that it is stated distinctly therein that every patient in the institution has resolutely refused to sign the new rules. It is impossible in these circumstances to attempt to treat the matter as the grievance of an individual. So one would for one moment think of disputing Mr. Buddo's assertion that it is recognised that. a. little_ light work is a good thing for patients at the sanatorium. and no one complains, so far as we are aware, of the food supplied. Our correspondent' distinctly pointed out that no objection was raised to doing light outdoor work: the complaint made was to the introduction of economies which compelled patients to perform household duties of a.nature enumerated. It has to be borne in mind that the ordinary patients at the sanatorium have to pay fees ranging from a guinea and a- half to two guineas a week, and they can hardly be treated as inmates of a charitable .institution. No one can object to reasonable economies in any ■ public Department, but what is being done at Cambridge does not, on . the facts available, ' strike us as being reasonable. Possibly if the Minister will make inquiries in the proper quarters he will bo able to ascertain what the grievance really amounts to. -At present it is quite evident he knows very little about it.