A MEDICAL SOCIETY.

Evening Star, Issue 4128, 20 May 1876, Page 2

A MEDICAL SOCIETY.

Professor Coughtrey has sent us the following circular, which explains itself :

The members of the medical profession iu this Colony are now sufficiently numerous to justify the formation of a New Zea’aud Medical Association, whose objects might be the advancement of medical science and lire promotion of the common interests of the medical profession. Several gcu. tlemcn practising in various parts of this Province having desired me to try end form a medkal society in Dunedin, I have elected to address the iromb rj of the profession throughout the entire Colony us to 'he ad visibility of erecting one geuonl medical association in New Zealand, with a branch society iu cash important city where a sufficient number of medical men obtains.

The advantages that would accrue to the public and to the profession if the latter possessed one repres ntatrve and united organisation, whereby it R vo co on questions of medical politics ight 1 o heard, are obvious; and it appears to me that there is every probability, amid the many constitutional

ohuiges through which the Colony is now passing, and the consequent adjustment of details which will inevitably follow such changes, that there will be many matters t>f medical interest cropping nn upon which it would be preamble that the voice o? the profession as a whole should be known. No medium is more likely to secure a healthy voice than a General Association which might migrate from city to city, annually or otherwise, according as it may be determined on, and permanently located branch societies (founded on one common basis and on harmonious principles), in which questions touching the existing position of the profession, medical ethics and science, might be temperately discussed ahd weighed. I beg very respect fully to inform you that so far as the medical gentlemen resident in this district are concerned, I intend calling a meeting on the 28th of June next to initiate a branch society in Otago, and at this meeting all letters from those gentlemen who may be unable to attend will be read, and I respectfully solicit the co-operation and sympathy of the medical profession throughout New Zealand, so that simultaneous meetings of the profession may be held in tbe Provinces of the Colony for the purpose of initiating simitar branch societies. As soon as the societies are in .operation I intend proposing the establishment of a- Journal of Medical Science ” for this Colony.