Doctor Attacks Profession

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 51, 23 November 1937, Page 4

Doctor Attacks Profession

-ProPi1 Aasocialion.l

TRAINING METHODS Medicos Who Do Not Practice Till They Are 30 "ACCENT SHOULD BE ON YOUTH"

(By TeleRraoh

AUCKLAND, Last Night. Some of the freest critieism of the medical profession by ono of its own members that has been heard in Auckland for some time t. as uttered by Dr. F. J. Gwynne, radiologigt, in an address at the Auckland Rctaiy Club's luncheon. Dr. Gwynlie, viliose femarks were sprinkled wiih a good deal of liumoiir, paiticularly attacked medical education and doctor's hostility to the medical efforts of cutsiders. "Ihe medical profession is changing in i:.s altitude to its patisnis and Jo the ccmmunity," he said, "but in the transition it is difficult to keep adjustmbnt abreast of the change, The doctor should be the product of a perf ect civilisation, and he needs your help." Stating that he would try to indicate why the system and not individual doctors deserved critieism, Dr. Gwynne explained that he did not wish to pose as a reformer.. After spending six years in a medical school and after the expenditure of at least £.1500, a young doctor had not enough confidence to start in practice himself and usually embarked on a four or five years' postgraduate course. At the end of that he was about 30 years old, with jhalf his life gone, and still he was without praetical experience. Dr. Gwynne severely criticised the compulsory lectures by the far too numerous and narrow specialists who "raised tediousness to an exact science" and reliance on textbooks with no study of the works of great physicians. Specialisation, he said, tended to overcrowd and overload the curriculum. Those who were responsible forgot that medicine was an art . and that no amount of teaching would make it a science. Examinations were often justly suspected of being competitive to let only a certain number through eaeh year. They seemed designed to find out what tiie student did not know rather than what he did, and the candidate who was the best echo and imitator of his teacher tended to do best. "What is the result?" asked the speaker. "A diploma bearing signa-. tures, to the illegibility of whiclh is added a liver of arterioselerosis, a few technical tricks which we can teach to our secretaries in a few weeks so that they can do our work, and the loss of the critical faculty after a long period of absorbing uneorrelated material so that it remains uneorrelated for many years. "In medicine responsibility should be undertalcen at a much earlier age. All through history the aecent has been on youth. Hertz, Eutherford, Davy, Galileo, Faraday and many more h .d made great discoveries before the ago of 30."