LAW QUARRELS WITH MEDICINE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 119, 10 August 1927, Page 16

LAW QUARRELS WITH MEDICINE

“ABOMINABLE CHARGES” FLUTTER IN FIJI “My reply is that your charges are utterly false and that you are a liar!” SO writes Mr. Philip Harper, acting chief medical officer at Suva, about N. S. Chalmers, barrister and solicitor, of Ba, in the latest, issue of the “Fiji Times and Herald.” They evidently do not believe in innuendo in Fiji. Alleging that his son, a Grammar School boy, had been treated for a mild attack of measles in a leper ward of the War Memorial Hospital at Suva, Mr. Chalmers wrote to the “Fiji Times” demanding that a Royal Commission should be set up to inquire into the administration of the hospital. He made five charges. His son, together with other boys, had been placed in an isolation ward previously used by lepers with running sores, he had slept on a mattress lately used by a leper, and he had been fed from utensils used by lepers. The buildings had never been cleaned out. “WITHOUT FOUNDATION” The latest number of the “Times” contains an apology for the publishing of Mr. Chalmers’s letter. “We have now learned that the charges are without foundation in fact and we hasten to express our apology to the administrator of the hospital for having printed the communication, and we unreservedly withdraw from any association with the charges,” says the paper. By the side of this clean-breasted apology is published Dr. Philip Harper’s reply to the “abominable charges.” He comments that it was probably because Mr. Chalmers believed himself to be securely sheltered behind the law that he made the charges in a newspaper instead of to the head of the Government. “My own inclination,” continued the medical officer, “and that of the other members of the administration against whom your charges are levelled, was to treat them and you with contempt. After full consideration, however, I feel that the public is entitled to know the truth about a public institution, and that your communication calls for a reply. “My reply—which will, I hope, have the same publicity that your communication has received —is that your charges are utterly false and that you are a liar.”