ILLEGAL TREATMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 184, 6 August 1925, Page 8

ILLEGAL TREATMENT.

" * • DRUG "SPECIALIST" FDJED. Medical examination of a young maawaiting sentence at the Dunedin prison on a charge of breaking and entering led to the police instituting against William Michael Wilkinson, a "specialist," carrying on business in the Arcade, the first prosecution that has been taken! under the Social Hygiene Act of 1917. Defendant was charged before Mn.H. WJ Bundle, S.M. Various kinds of medicine" I were produced in the court, the "bottle figuring most being one containing a' pink fluid, which the police said had been sold to the young man by Wilkinson as a cure for a venereal affection. Wilkinson's defence was that he had sold it as a cure for an affection of the kidneys. |he charge against him wasThat not being a registered medical practitioner, he would undertake for payment the treatment of venereal disease." Defendant was fined £0 and' ordered to pay £1 1/ medical fee and 0/ I costs, in default one month's imprison-1 ment. His Worship said it was a serious I matter that any person except a registered medical practitioner should attempt to treat such a disease. He was unaware whether compulsory notification had been yet made effective, but a serious liability was thrown by section 4 of the Act on every medical practitioner.