THE EXPATRIATION OF PHTHISICAL PATIENTS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 387, 24 July 1889, Page 4

THE EXPATRIATION OF PHTHISICAL PATIENTS.

An important article on the above subject appears in the " Medical Press " of May 22nd. It says ; "Dr. Bakewell, writing from Auckland, New Zealand, calls attention in the columns of a contemporary to the foolish practice of sending persons to that (or any other) colony who are incapable of doing a full day's work, unless they are in a condition to command a proper supply of" creature comforts in the way of medicine, attention, etc. Judging from the indiscriminate and reckless way in which persons far advanced in phthisis are expatriated, one is led to"" suppose that the public, as well as the profession, credit the climate of New Zealand with valuable properties in arresting the progress of the disease. Under favourable circumstances, and at an early period of the disease, this may to some extent be true, but it is downright cruelty to despatch a person who either dies on the way, after contaminating a number of his fellow-passengers, or succumbs to the disease, accelerated by misery and privation, soon after his arrival, far from his friends and deprived of the only solace which can mitigate his last days. Dr. Bakewell's protest, 'though nob characterised by undue severity, is certainly justifiable, and possibly if he perseveres m his intentions of « dinning it into the stupid ears of John Bull,' he may bye-and-bye succeed in awakening him to a sense of the impropriety of his conduct, A little more stringency in the conditions under which phthisical persons are admitted to undertake thevoyage, at theriskof exposing their fellow-travellers to infection, would, however, in all probability, go iurther than any theoretical or sentimental considerations in restricting tlie output of so undesirable a clasa of emigrants.'