MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS AND EMIGRANTS.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 62, 11 August 1874, Page 3

MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS AND EMIGRANTS.

The “ Lancet ” has the following on the very important question of medical aid at sea—“ Most of our readers have at some time or other glanced over the advertisement columns of the daily journals, and have seen, among the many comforts and attractions offered to those going to India, Australia, New Zealand, and the Cape, a list of ‘ experienced surgeons ’ ready at a moment’s notice during the voyage. We do not care to canvass the special merits or short-comings of those of our cloth who elect to go down to the sea in ships and occupy themselves on the great waters ; but we know as a fact that since the first ship advertisement appeared the travelling and the initiated public have chosen to regard this ‘ experience ’ as a misnomer, a delusion, and a snare. The ship doctor has comrasnly been considered as the ruck of the profession, whose capacities lay ranch more in the direction of brandy-and-water than the healing of the sick. But ocean travelling and the number of mercantile medical officers have increased during the past ten years very considerably, and, as we know, emigration from this counIry now assumes gigantic proportions. Lienee, whether popular opinion, as indicated above, bej ust or unjust, it is proper that the public should know whether any official standard has been established such as will ensure to oceanic travellers of all classes, as well as to emigrants, that medical wants afloat will be properly and efficiently supplied, It may or may not be generally known that at the beginning of last year the Board of Trade assumed, by a special Act of Parliament, all duties and responsibilities connected with emigration, and, in fact, now performs the work of the Emigration office. The Passenger Acts of 1855 and (which comprise the laws relating to emigration at present in force) contain sections reciting that every ‘passenger ship’must carry a ‘duly qualified medical practitioner when there are more than fifty passengers on board, and when the voyage exceeds eighty days for a sailing vessel, and fortylive days for a steam-ship, and also in any case wiicn the total number on board (including cabin passengers, officers, and crew) exceeds three hundred persons. The term ‘ duly qualified ’ is explained clearly enough iu section 50 of the Medical Act of 1858, which recites that no person can hold any appointment in the military or naval service, or in emigrant or other vessels, or in any hospital, parish, union, {cc,, . . . unless possessing certain qualifica-

tions expressed in schedule A of the Acts. We need not describe the contents of this schedule, but have only to point out the responsibilities that devolve upon the Board of Trade in seeing that, as a minimum qualification, those provisions of the Passenger Act are carried out, not only as regards emigrant ships, but also as regards all British and Colonial vessels that bear a surgeon on their articles. Is this done, and done systematically ? The Jaw demands that it should be done as fully and as faithfully as in the case of army and navy surgeons or Poor Law medical officers, and, in fact, of all other naval, military, and civil officers in the service of the Crown, or those who are directly or indirectly subject to Imperial legislation. It must be remembered that, according to statistics published last year, no less than 295,218 emigrants left the United Kingdom in 1872 in steam and sailing ships, and these statistics alone show how much medical officers are responsible for afloat. Indeed, it is no insult to the sister services to say that, under ordinary circumstances, the duties of a surgeon in charge of an emigrant ship with 500 or 600 persons of all classes, ages, and nationalities onboard are, for the time being, of a far more important and responsible nature than those of a medical officer in charge of a regiment or a Queen’s ship. And hence, as we infer, it is one of the chief duties of the Board of Trade to take care those sections of the Passengers Act above referred to are carried out in their integrity. There are other sanitary aspects of emigration to which we shall presently have occasion to refer ; but undoubted evidence exists that there are now many ‘ experienced’ surgeons afloat whose names cannot be found either in the Medical Register or in the books of any examining body in the United Kingdom.