Knife Lust

NZ Truth, Issue 1186, 23 August 1928, Page 6

Knife Lust

THE most odious and unwholesome document that can be put m against the B.M.A. is the ' "Abstract of Statistics." The number of surgical operations performed m this country is nothing but a hideous, blot on the escutcheon of medical practice — and the public has every justification for shrieking at th. indiscriminate wielding of the knife. , > When the chairman of the Auckland Hospital Board spoke of "an increasing tendency on the part of. patients to submit themselves to surgical treatment," he threw a bombshell of fact into the machinery of one of the greatest monopolies m the world. ''■... It could truthfully be said that practically every doctor m this country would admit m his heart that -there is an unjustifiable welter — nay orgy-— of surgery today. But where is the control? i There is none. 'And just so long as. suffering humanity loses its personality for mere numbers and its individuality for mere case., just so long will money-first surgeons virtually bludgeon their patients into a state of submission to "go under" on the slab of problematical things. There are doctors about tq-day who have somehow got loose and who would make darn poor plumbers' assistants, let alone surgeons. ' . - It is bad enough for these, medical duds to suggest "operations," without a general plunge into the blood of mankind by practically every man entitled, to call himself a surgeon. There is no such thing as a "tendency on the part of patients to submit, themselves to surgical treatment." Acting with, lamblike faith; m medical advice, the average patient takes his doctor's word (sometimes for more than it is worth) when an operation is suggested. The fact that one m every three or four people to-day bear the gash of the surgeon's knife is not proof so much that we are a phenomenally sick country as we are sheepish subjects for medical monopolists afflicted by the money bug and blood lust. At the present rate of medical progress — -or racial deterioration^ —the man, woman or child m the? years shortly to come, who has providentially escaped a major operation gash, will be a boxoffice attraction. The American surgeon who recently advocated the "initialing or signing" on the flesh of the patient, by the operating surgeon, for purposes of medical identification was a palpable indication of the lightness with which, some medical men treat surgery. There should be some rigorously inspectorial medical tribunal, unfettered' by that dangerously close trade union, the 8.M.A., to step m and not only check this fearful blood lust and race breakdown, but see that even those operations that are absolutely necessary to save life are done properly. '■■-■■. At the present time, the dreadful black mantle of hush-hush and sinister silence can be legally thrown, over the most brutally callous surgical "job." , Revolutions have sprung from less and it is time the Minister for* Health, with the Government behind him, Stepped m and fully investigated the position. Human life is worth it. " •