ENEMY DOCTORS.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 December 1919, Page 4

ENEMY DOCTORS.

AUSTRAL AN B.M.A. DEMANDS DEPORTATION. SYDNEY, Dec. 10. Medical practitioners in New Zealand will probably be interested in the resolution passed unanimously by a largely attended meeting of the New South Wales branch of the British Medical Association: — “That the British Medical Association, New South Wales branch, protests against those medical practitioners who were interned during the war as being alien enemy subjects or otherwise dangerous to the community, being allowed to resume practice.” “That the New South Wales Medical Board be asked to take steps for the removal from the medical register of —(a) Persons registered in virtue of German or Austrian qualifications, not resident or practising in New South Wales; and (b) persons registered who have been interned as alien enemy subjects or otherwise.”

“That the Federal Government be ask ed to deport those medical practitioners who were interned during the war as being alien enemy subjects, or otherwise dangerous to the community.” “That the Federal Government be advised that claims!, understood to have been made on behalf of one or more of the medical practitioners who were interned during the war, that they possessed certain special knowledge essential to the well-being of the comm may, which would he lost by their deportation, are not based on any known facts; and that any special knowledge or expertness that they may have possessed, perhaps in greater degree, by many prac titioners in different parts of the Commonwealth.” The motion was submitted by Dr. K. Scot Skirving, who declared that it was neither right nor fair that those whom they had treated before the war with all the camaraderie which they had given to their owif flesh and blood, and who were openly or covertly disloyal to their hospitality, should now he received hack and treated as if nothing had happened. What would be the fate of a British practitioner in Berlin or Vienna? It had been argued m certain quarters, by lay persons probably that some of these men ought to be allowed to practice again because of their special knowledge and their usefulness to the community. This argument was totally unjustified—doubly so, in view of the special knowledge gained from war surgery. There were men in Sydney today, for instance, whose knowledge on the subject of orthopaedics was as good as, and probably better than, that of any alien practitioner. “If political reasons and the sublime folly and forgetfulness of the British race allow these enemies in our midst still to make a living out of us, added the doctor, “I doubt if that living could ever be a very lucrative one. For there must he scores of practitioners who like myself, will have no truck, personally oi professionally, with any of these men who belong to the enemy nations, and whose depraved and unbearable outloo on life is as unchanged to-day as thei action and power for evil has been m the past-”.. ■