MEDICAL CONGRESS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 75, 19 September 1911, Page 5

MEDICAL CONGRESS

THE ABUSE OF HOSPITALS.

DOCTORS ENJOINED TO "FIGHT TO THE LAST DITCH."

By Cable—Press Association—Copyright, Received 18, 11 p.m. Sydney, September 18.

. The ninth session of the Australasian Medical Congress opened to-day under the presidency of Dr. F. Antill Porkley. After disposing of formal business, Congress discussed the question of the abuse of hospitals by those able to pay. Real interest in the debate centred in the attitude of the profession towards the proposals recently made by Mr. Flowers, Acting-Chief Secretary, in favor of a general system of State hospitals. Dr. Worrall (Sydney) hoped that whatever Ministers did, the profession would fight to the last ditch. The proposals were, he said, not only adverse to the interests of medical men but to the interests of sick poor. Dr. Nash (Sydney) supported Mr. Flowers' scheme. A majority of the other speakers were more favorable to a continuation of the present voluntary system.

Dr. Robertson (New Zealand) said the mistake made by New Zealand in hospital legislation was that they failed to adopt a primary understanding that hospitals were intended for the sickpoor.

Congress adopted a resolution to the effect that if Governments undertook the entire financial support of hospitals, patients who were able to obtain medical services outside the hospitals should be excluded, and that boards of management should be retained.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE.

Received 10, 12.55 a.m. Sydney, September 18.

There was a 'brilliant gathering in the Town Hall when Lord Denman to-night formally opened the Medical Congress. Dr. Pockley, in his presidential address, said that more universally and rapidly than at any time in its history was medicine passing from the traditional and empiric, and becoming more rational. Scientific discoveries made and foreshadowed threatened not only to revolutionise medicine, but, within limits, inexorable nature ordains profoundly to alter inter-racial relationships and the influence of man's distribution on the face of the globe, mainly through knowledge of the causes anil the processes of microbic disease, and preventing, modifying and controlling the action of bacterial organisms. That these results would be brought about was exhaustively revealed by the developments in various branches of medical science.

The work of the congress will be divided into sections—medicine, surgery, obstetrics, gynaecology, etc.—mid under' these heads a number of highly important papers will be read, and discussions earned on. In medicine the subject arterio sclerosis has been selected for consideration, while in surgery the treatment of fractures, the surgery of (he large intestine, and the ■ treatment of surgical shock will ho discussed, and a paper has been promised on hydatid disease. In connection with anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology, an address will be given on shock, syncope, and collapse. A. special general meeting of (lie congress will be devoted to the consideration of scrum and vaccine therapy, and the subject of infantile paralysis will be discussed jointly by several sections The section of pathology, hacteriolo"v and tropical medicine will devote *'a morning session to the discussion of ankylostomiasis, while papers will be read on such subjects as objects and scope of tropical medicine, the cause of goitre in Tasmania, and the haemolvtie action of snake venom. Papers on 'the house fly and typhoid fever, pulmonary diseases among miners, and of school hygiene in Queensland, come under the section of public health, while valuable work will be done by the sections of opthalmology, neurology, diseases of children dermatology, radiology, larym'ololy rhinology, and otology, and naval and military medicine and surgery.