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Hokitika Guardian, 15 September 1933, Page 4

Professor T. Gillnran Moorhead, president of the British Medical Association, at the recent conference, stated that quackery is still rampant and its elimination depends ultimately on the education of the public. He insisted that if quackery in the profession were to be avoided it was essential that everyone entering the profession should receive a wide, liberal education. One is happy to think that such an education is new our common property, yet I venture to think that a greater grounding in inductive logic and in the laws of evidence would not bo amiss. A country is said to get the Government if deserves. On the whole, this country seams to me to get better medical services than it deserves, but it would got better still if it knew bow to appreciate those services at their true value, and if it was better trained in distinguishing the false from the true. I would lake to teach elementary logic in the higher classes of every school in the country, and in. the same classes to give short courses in elementary physiology, and in hygiene. Such a training might help to remove the credulity which still believes in magic, and

which enables the charlatan to flourish. To-day medical education is still under discussion. Finality has not been reached, and never will be reached. Our science and our art arc progressive, and therefore it is essential that our educational curriculum should be varied from time to time in accordance with advancing knowledge. I have never wavered front my view that all that we can do in the course of tlie medical curriculum is to instil a broad knowledge of principles. If wfe succeed in doing that, a student placed on his own responsibility is capableof continuing bis education land of acquiring all the details which lie requires with extraordinary rapidity If be does not acquire the principles, he will never throughout his life attain to a position higher tha n that of Ip, qualified quack, at the mercy of every wind that blows, and the servant of the vendors of those many proprietary preparations whose alluring advertisements assault our breakfast fable.”