THE LATE DR. BAKEWELL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 445, 2 January 1909, Page 3

THE LATE DR. BAKEWELL.

The death ot Dr. R. H. Bakewell removes from the medical profession of Auckland one of its most conspicuous personalities. But knowledge of the good doctor was not confined to Auckland; his writings to the press on all kinds of subjects —and less of his profession than of anything else t—made for him a New Zealand reputation. He was a medical man of the old school as distinguished from that which flourishes the stethoscope as a fieliFraarshal wields his baton. Dr Bakewell was a surgeon in the Crimean war, and also served in the Transvaal war. With patients with imaginary ailments he was at times somewhat brusque, but in of genuine sickness he was the embodiment of tenderness, and there are many now living who otfe him lifelong gratitude for Wriest diagnosis, patient attention,

and. f so ~far,, .as human agency. successful treatment. The doctor had a most extensive library, by no means all medical works. He was widely and deeply read, and when he wrote —he suffered 1 somewhat from cacoethes scribendi —he did so as one throughly well grounded in his subject, be it Greek hexameters or the evolution of aerial navigation. He was a man with a large and generous heart, and although increasing age. and infirmity had limited his medical work of late years, he was the firm friend and trusted medical adviser of hosts of people in Auckland city, who thought nothing of visiting his surgery when he removed to Onehunga, some miles out of the city, notwithstanding that it might have been; better for them to have remained at home to be attended there by a local doctor. Dr. Bakewell has left a distinct gap in the medical profession of New Zealand.