"GLORIOUS ISOLATION."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 80, 6 April 1931, Page 3

"GLORIOUS ISOLATION."

DOMINION FORTUNATE.

VISITING SURGEON'S VIEWS

CRITICISM OF HOSPITALS,

"I have often heard people in New Zealand apologising for your public institutions, but I think the Dominion should be congratulated on what has been achieved in considerably less than, a century." This was the comment cf Dr. Steele Stewart, an orthopaedic surgeon of Los Angeles, who spent a few weeks in New Zealand recently and then went on to Australia. He is now a through passenger by the Aorangi.

Dr. Stewart said New Zealand should be grateful for her "glorious isolation,"' as ?t. was possible to build up her institutions on new lines, taking all that was best from other countries, ar.u leaving out all that was useless, hut often carried out owing to an adherence to slavish tradition.

Commenting on the public hospii.il system of the Dominion, Dr. Stewart said he did not consider that the medical practitioners were given a "fair break." He had noticed in one public hospital in the South that a titled Englishman was in the same ward as an ordinary New Zealand worker. It was certainly a compliment to the efficiency of the hospital, but such a thing could not happen in America. "If, for instance," he said, "an accident case is admitted to a public hospital he is 'combed' for information as to his financial standing as soon as he is conscious, and if he can afford to pay for private medical attention he is quickly told to 'move on.'"

Dr. Stewart said he realised that one of the troubles of a young country was the expense of equipping and endowing hospitals. It was a costly work. As far as Los Angeles was concerned, many people spent the winter of their lives there after having made their fortunes in other centres, and when they died they left charitable bequests to the cities where their money had been made. They would have to look to the future and depend on those who had acquired fortunes in Los Angeles to endow their public institutions in the future. Dr. Stewart is to be entertained at dinner to-night by members of the Auckland medical profession.