SURGEON OR BEAUTY MAN.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1584, 30 October 1912, Page 2

SURGEON OR BEAUTY MAN.

VEXED QUESTIO.N. Interest , has been aroused in London on the question whether surgeons should enter tho sphere of the beauty specialist— whether a woman with on undesirable spot or l.lemish should be nblo to havo it removed by tho ordinary practitioner as readily,as by the lady who devotes herself entirely to this art. The experience of ono woman who thought th.it a surgeon should treat her is given in the "Daily Mail" thus:— "I. called on a famous West End skin specialist and asked whetner ho could remove t\ few blemishes 1 havo on my face. Almost brusquely Iμ gave me to understand tint I had made a mistake in coming to him, explaining that he was not a beauty specialist." The lady asks: "Is it possible thrft tho medical profession, which is constantly urging the importance of correct surgica'l procedure and strictest antiseptic precautions for 'jven the slightest operation, is willing to see its patients pass into the hands of unqualified beauty quacks rather than break through its old-timo prejudice against treating anything but an absolute disease?"

A hospital surgeon pleads in support of the view that the work should Le undertaken by ordinary practitioners. "Prejudice dic-s hard in our profession," he says, "and (here is still a strong feeling with the moro staid practitioners that anything which savours of beauty treatment is be'neath< their dignity. But many of the younger, 'more progressive men are now beginning to look at the other side of the question—namely, the grave risks their patients run if, unable to gain any sympathy from their family medical advisers, they aro driven into Iho hands of unqualified quacks. Take, for example, the treatment of port wine stains and moles. It is a well-recognised fact that to try to remove a molo with plasters or caustics is to run a serious risk of inducing a hitherto harmless outgrowth to undergo cancerous changes. Now women are sometimes rendered acutely 'miserable by reason of these littlo blemishes, and they will find someone to undertake their removal even if the qualified surgeon refuses his aid. Hence, in the skin department of most largo liosw'tolicnowadaya, , .: the treatment of moles has become part of Iho daily regime. The samo reasoning applies'with even more force to black-hair moles'i- and to birth-marks or pbrt wine stains."