MEDICAL CONFERENCE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2392, 23 February 1915, Page 8

MEDICAL CONFERENCE

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS MORE MEDICAL STUDENTS . WANTED (By Telegraph.—Press 'Association.) Chrlstchuroh, February 22. The New Zealand Medical Conference opened to-night. The -presidentelect, Dr. Irving, delivered a most interesting address dealing with the medical profession as a career. In the course of his address he said: "I should like to say a little about our New Zealand University medical graduates. Some are inclined, being members of the older and larger University, to rather belittle the local qualification, but having had considerable experience of the New Zealand graduate, I can say without hesitation that this view is quite erroneous, and that men which Dunedin turns out are, at any .rate as faras. theoretical knowledge is concerned, in every way equal-to those who axe turned out by older. British schools. The experience to be obtained from a large hospital, of course, they cannot hope to get here, but their ground work and scientific training are excellent and solid, and experience must perforce come with later years."

Continuing, he said: "A doctor can do a great deal towards educating tho public, and by that means prevent, to some extent, the tremendous amount of and tho taking of quack remedies which undoubtedly goes on. Legislation cannot compel people to Tefrain from taking drugs, or Ibeing influenced by reading advertisemente of a complaint which always seems to he the very one they are suffering from. I 6hould like to say here that I consider legislation passed in the Dominion and carried out by the Public Health authorities has done a great deal, far more than is realised by the public, to put down some, of the worst types of quacks, and our newspapers, too, compare most favourdbly with many of those coming from Great Britain, which advertise in/ the most barefaced way drugs, etc., calculated to do the utmost harm to the moral and physioal condition of their dupes. The medical knowledge of most people, as far as there is any, is a survival of theories formed of doctors in the dark ages, and the teaching that when there is any doubt as to the nature of a disease the liver should be made the scapegoat is still deeply .engraved in the public mind. "There should be no mystery in medicine. The state cf a case ae the doctor sees it should be explained to the patient as far as possible, taking care not to go to the other extreme and make confusion worse confounded by using long technical names or persisting in telling. him gruesome details of operations." In conclusion-Dr. Irving said: "There is at present a- strong'reason why as many young men as can should take up medicine, and that is the terrible loss in war of dootors,. ' members of R.A.M.O. and Civil Surgeons serving temporarily. The response of medical men and medical students in England and elsewhere has been no whit behind the combatant' branohes. and in consequence there is a great shortage of both at present.' The number of students preparing to qualify in the United Kingdom, is over 1000 less than in 1913, which means thai for the next. few years there will be between 200 and 300 less' names added to the medical register each year, and the .president of the General Medical Council, reviewing the situation, says:

; "Tn. view of _ the. additional losses among the senior 'praotitioners due directly or indirectly to the war, the prospective diminution of our reserve supply calls for,serious consideration." Let us hope then, that as many parents as_ can "see their way to it, will put their sons into medicine as a career which has always had great possibilities and now more than ever, though as one might say only in its infancy, and that our sons in the future will go to swell the number which has already gone from these shores, many of whom have done brilliantly, to become members of that honourable 1 profession—the profession of medicine. " ' ■. Dr. W. H. Parkes (Auckland) the rearing . president, made • a strong appeal on behalf of. the hospital for soldiers at Trentham, and . said . there was urgent for-' that institution/. It was a perfectly erroneous View, he said, to think that the Defence Department wasshirking its responsibilities in the matter. He had it on the highest authority that the .Government would build a soldiers'; hospital and the money raised by the medical profession would be earmarked for medical equipment and special comforts for the men.