DUTY OF DOCTORS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1938, Page 5

DUTY OF DOCTORS

VINDICATION OF LONDON SURGEON IN TRIAL AT OLD BAILEY. ILLEGAL OPERATION CHARGE FAILS. By Telegraph—-Press Association. Copyright. (Recd This Day, 9.15 a.m.) LONDON, July 19. Mr A. W. Bourne was found not guilty. Mr Roland Oliver, addressing the jury, emphasised that Mr Bourne had not intended to get the law altered, nor hoped for an acquittal on sympathetic grounds. His attitude was that his action was lawful and honest and he was aiming to get the law declared, in order to end a controversy as to what a doctor is allowed to do. Sir Malcolm MacNaghten, summing up, emphasised the difference between Mr Bourne’s case and prosecutions for illegal abortion, pointing out that Mr Bourne had acted out of charity, without fee, and believed he was doing right, in pursuance of his duty to alleviate suffering. The Judge added that if pregnancy was likely to make a woman a physical and mental wreck a jury was entitled to take the view that an operation was justified. If a doctor, in good faith, thought an .operation necessary in order to preserve the mother’s life, he was not only entitled to operate, but had a duty so to do. The. jury had to consider whether Mr Bourne acted in good faith. The jury was absent for forty minutes. There was some applause at the verdict, but it was immediately suppressed. Mr Bourne, outside the court, was warmly congratulated, the first to shake hands with him being the girl concerned in the case.

Doctors gathered at the British Medical Association conference at Bournemouth stood up and cheered when they heard of the verdict. A cablegram from London yesterday reported that the Old Bailey was crowded with doctors, (medical students and society people at the opening of a trial which was regarded as of great importance to the medical profession, arising out of a criminal assault on a 15-year-old girl in Whitehall Barracks and for which three men of the Horse Guards had been sentenced. Mr Aleck William Bourne, a prominent obstetrical surgeon, was charged with having illegally used an instrument on the girl. The AttorneyGeneral’s speech for the* prosecution consisted chiefly of the reading of letters exchanged between Bourne and Dr Joan Malleson, who brought tht> girl’s condition to Bourne’s notice, Dr Malleson pointing out to the police and other doctors connected with the case that it was felt an operation should be performed, adding that many people believe the best means of correcting the abortion law is to let the medical profession extend the grounds in suitable cases until the law is obsolete in practice. “I imagine public opinion is immensely in favour of the termination of pregnancy in these cases,” she said.