"CHAIR" OF TUBERCULOSIS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 64, 8 December 1917, Page 12

"CHAIR" OF TUBERCULOSIS

PIONEER FIGHTER GIVEN OfffiST APPOINTMENT.

The Edinburgh University Court recently instituted a Chair of Tuberculosis, to which Sir Robert Philip was appointed ae the first professor. The new chair has an endowment from the. Royal Victoria Tuberculosis Trust of Edinburgh. Sir Robert.Philip founded in 1887 the first tuberculosis dispensary in the world at Edinburgh, and the movement he( initiated has since spread to the Continent and to America, while, m London alone eleven tuberculosis dispensaries _ have come into existence. "The significance of this progressive policy on tho part of Edinburgh University," said a leading London expert on tuberculosis to a "Daily News" representative, "lies in the fact that it will have far-reaching results on tho national health. It has becorao evident that in many instances there is a gigantic waste of public money in sauatoria owing to unsuitable cases being sent for treatment through lack of diagnosis before the disease is far advanced. It ia clear that if every medical student graduating from our universities had a thorough training in the early diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis the great majority of eases, both in private and in public practice, would bo diagnosed at a time when the chances of cure are greatly in the patients' favour. ■ No matter how much is spent by_ the Government in providing institutions for the control of tuberculosis, the disease from which ono in eight of our total population die will never he eradicated until tho essential fiurts of its causation, diagnosis, and cure are in the everyday practice of medicine."