SERVICE TO HUMANITY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 245, 30 July 1935, Page 8

SERVICE TO HUMANITY

RISKS TAKEN BY DOCTORS. Two days after he had conducted a post-mortem examination at Nonvoo Cottage Hospital, Dr. John J. Douglas, of London, developed symptoms ot blood poisoning, fflte died two days later. It was then .discovered that there was a small punctured wound the size of a pinhead on the doctor s left wrist. • . “There is no reasonable doubt that the doctor died from infection contracted while carrying out an autopsy, said;Dr. H. Beecher Jackson (Coroner) at the inquest at Croydon. A verdict of “Death by misadventure” was recorded.

A friend said to an interviewei • “The autopsy was on a patient who had died following an operation. Dr Douglas, who was 69, did not even suspect he. had scratched himself until two days later, when he became feverish.” Sir Ernest Graham Little, the wellknown surgeon, said: “There is great danger to a doctor performing an autopsy if he does not wear gloves. Toxic germs remain active a long time after death, and if the doctor has the slightest scratch on his hands he is risking infection and perhaps death.” Many doctors have given their lives for their work during the past 20 years. Last year Dr. William Murray Taylor, who strove heroically for months to stem the epidemic of scarlet, enteric and diphtheritic fevers in north-east Scotland, contracted diphtheritic? fever, while on duty, and died within a week.

Mine. Marie Curie died last year of an obscure disease contracted while she helped her husband in his pioneer experiments in radium. Another tragic death was that of Dr. H. J. B. Fry, cousin of C. B. Fry, the cricketer.' Dr. Fry spent his life in cancer research, and died of cancer in 1930, contracted while directly involved in a cancer case.