DOCTORS VERSUS LAWYERS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3120, 28 June 1881, Page 3

DOCTORS VERSUS LAWYERS.

The New Zealand Herald says :-—" The rapacity of the legal profession is proverbial, and people have been accustomed to quote the Waka Maori libel case, and the State prosecution of George .Tones, jun., as typical cases. Bxxt the medical profession, at least in "Victoria, run thorn very hard, if one may judge from the following facts, which have come out in a Parliamentary paper laid before the Victorian Assembly. Mr Superintendent Hare, it will be remembered, was wounded in the wrist in the affair with the Kelly gang at GHenrowan. That injured wrist has been a perfect godsend to at least three medical men. Dr. Ryan got £G3 for going to Benalla to look at that wiist, and £252 for twentyfour visits to that wrist at Sunbury. At Kichmond it was necessary to pay 150 visits of inspection by the same gentleman, at a cost of £157 10s. The doctor evidently thought he had done well enough out of the affair, and apparently retires from the scone, for Dr. Fitzgerald now puts in a bill of £107 2s 6d —mark the scrupulosity evinced against over charging by inserting that halfcrown for professional attendance re the wrist. Evidently Dr Ryan and Dr Fitzgerald were not equal to the situation in respect to that wrist, and a Dr Youl comes in with a bill of £28 7s. This latter is so paltry a figure, that it must either be a retainer or a "refresher" touching that •wrist. The balance of the bill which foots up to a grand total of £620, is made up of miscellaneous medical charges, The Benalla

Standard heartlessly remarks that had a constable been shot, in tho wrist lie would hare been handed over to the police siu'geon, and the cost would have been less than a sixtieth part of the above bill.