MEDICAL TRAINING.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 288, 5 December 1925, Page 9

MEDICAL TRAINING.

. AND CARE OF INFANTS. PROPOSED UNIVERSITY CHAIR. "ASKING TOO MUCH." (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") DUNEDIX, this day. Sir Lindo Ferguson (Dean of the Medical Factulty of Otago University), in reply to a deputation from the Plunket Society for the establishment of a Chair of Infant Welfare in connection with the' Medical School, said that at present they were making great demands upon' the Government in regard to medical ' training, demands running into £12,000 to £14,000 a year, but even in them he had not outlined a special professorship in ' infant welfare. The Faculty did not wish to demand an absolutely ideal Medical School—the utmost possible. They -would never get anything if they did that. They had to go step by step, and not make their demands unreasonable. If ■ they • had everything at their Medical School which ,any other school in the world had got they would have a course so complicated that they would want not six but sixty years to get students through it. Their problem was to turn out medical practitioners in six years, and they were doing their job. and doing it, if he might he allowed to say so, not at all badly. In regard to preventive medicine, the Faculty hoped to be able to do more even than in the past. The conference of the PJunket Society recommended ■. the -central - council to appoint a travelling instructional nurse to visit and aid. the work of .branches which pay expenses. The conference decided to leave the question of raising funds by art unions and raffles to the individual branches.