The Sun WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1928 FEVER AND INSANITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 421, 1 August 1928, Page 8

The Sun WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1928 FEVER AND INSANITY

NO sooner has one hospital scandal abated than another arises. This truth is demonstrated again by State departmental decisions and explanations concerning- the disquieting lack of accommodation in Auckland for the isolation and treatment of infectious diseases, also the worse conditions all over the "Dominion for giving adequate institutional attention to mental trouble. In respect of both defects, this community at last has been given cause for satisfaction. The obduracy of the DirectorGeneral of Health in holding up the Hospital Board’s plans for the construction of a separate block of buildings for the treatment of infectious diseases has been bent to a more reasonable mood of compromise. After a hurried visit to an angry centre of hospital administration, Dr. Valintine has removed the harrier of red tape, and authorised the board to go on with its essential project. His conference with the hoard’s chairman was of “an amicable character.” The Direetor-General pressed his old plea for economy, and Mr. W. Wallace, though refusing to economise in any direction that would impair the general efficiency of the building (which would be false economy), apparently gave an assurance that no money would he wasted. It is a satisfactory conclusion to a regrettable deadlock. Quite obviously a prod at the right time has a salutary effect on departmental authority. But it is difficult to understand why the negotiating parties in the dispute took so much time composing their differences. That phase of the sorry business, however, may he forgotten now in the hope that an end will soon be made to the scandal of treating infectious diseases in an overcrowded hospital and subjecting the unfortunate patients to the risk and actual experience of cross-infection. If there is any reason left for regret at all, it can he found only in the board’s decision to build the infectious diseases block in the general hospital grounds. Unless doctors occasionally talk nonsense, infectious diseases should be treated in complete isolation, and not in the centre of a growing city. A busy profession, however, evidently cannot afford the time to motor on concrete roads out into the bracing country to treat fevered patients. And administrators, over-fond of centralisation, like to see their work in a mass. It then looks more impressive. As for the hospital treatment of the mentally sick, conditions are a great deal worse than even the keenest critics of the system could have imagined. The truth was placed in a stark light before the Government and Parliament last evening by the Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals. Overcrowding has become acute, and everywhere serious difficulties have become as prominent, as Rangitoto or the slackness of responsible politicians. Dr. T. G. Gray explains in his annual report that the number of mental patients in the Dominion’s institutions at the end of last year was 5,673, or 820 in excess of available accommodation. This surely is a disgraceful state of affairs, and a mockery of an administration and a Parliament, which rave about their humanitarian services. The department need not hesitate to proceed rapidly with the construction of Auckland’s new mental hospital at Puketahi. When the patients have been transferred there from Avondale, the State will have a readily marketable property for residential subdivision. Its prospective value should encourage the Minister of Health to make ample provision for Central and South Auckland’s sad needs at Puketahi. And it is right to give early and earnest consideration to the establishment of an adequate institution for North Auckland. The increase of insanity is a deplorable thing, and if the politicians can do nothing to remove the causes of mental wreckage they should at least do everything possible to alleviate it.

THE DAVIS CUP

WHEN Dwight F. Davis presented a massive silver cup for international tennis competition in 1900, three countries, Britain, United States and Australasia, constituted the chief competitors. To-day, over thirty nations send representatives from all quarters of the globe to contest the Davis Cup series. These players are the modern Marco Polos of sport, while curiously enough the present United States Secretary of War finds himself an ambassador of goodwill, and promoter of friendly sporting rivalry between the nations, by virtue of his 28-year-old gift to tennis. Again this year, French elan and scintillating court-craft have carried off the honours in the Davis Cup. It is a far ery to the days when Brookes and Wilding made Australia and New Zealand supreme. This year Australia travelled half-way round the world to take a trouncing at the hands of the mercurial Italians, and the two-man New Zealand team, after a splendid win in the early rounds, found itself unable to go further, owing to lack of funds. The United States, with a record of seven years’ unbroken success, is the last of the three great English-speaking countries in tennis to bow to the all-conquering Frenchmen, who deserve their brilliant success—the culmination of a-quarter of a century’s striving to wrest the famous trophy from their British and American rivals.