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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 55, 26 February 1876, Page 4

In looking over a Wellington paper the other day I met with the, following paragraph which was supposed to record a most unusual, if not an unprecedented, event: — " A Wellington doctor of medicine, celebrated for his professional talents, has received a ••call" from Taranaki to attend a patient whose case is critical. The instruction is brief — " Expense no object." Professional duties in town preclude compliance with the call, but a novel. expedient is to be resorted to. The case is to be diagnosed by telegraph, the symptoms being noted by the medical men in attendance on the patient at New Plymouth, and the Wellington practitioner advising thereon." Now, I can tell a story that will heat this, while at the same time it is equally true. A year or two Bgo a lady living in an up-country district was taken seriously, and, as it unhappily turned out, fatally ill. Her husband was a man of considerable wealth, and spared no expense in obtaining the best advice available in the chief city of his province, some hundred miles distant. The invalid, notwithstanding all the Bkill that wns brought to bear, was gradually fading away, and at last he determined upon availing himself of the highest talent in the world, so he had the case thoroughly diagnosed and sent the result to London by telegraph, and. on the arrival and ' departure of each Melbourne steamer (there was no Australian-New Zealand cable in those days) received advice .and despatched a report of the patient's state of health at a cost, it is said, of some hundreds of pounds. So that the Taranaki patient consulting the Wellington medical man by telegraph is by no means the first instance of tbe wires being used for such a purpose.