DOCTORS' RISKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 180, 1 August 1935, Page 11

DOCTORS' RISKS.

HEATH FROM A SCRATCH. Two days after he had conducted a post-mortem examination at Norwood Cottage Hospital, Dr. John J. Douglas, of Harold Road, Upper Norwood, S.E., developed symptoms of blood poisoning. Ho died two days later. It was then discovered that there wae a small punctured wound the 6izo of a pinhead on the doctor's left wriet. "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 a "Sunday Exprees" representative: "Tho autopsy was on a patient who had died following an operation. Dr. Douglas, who was 09, did not even suspect he had scratched himself until two days later, when he became feverish." Sir Ernest Graham Little, the wellknown surgeon, said in an interview; "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 pact 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-eaet Scotland, contracted diphtheritic fever while on duty and died within a week. Mme. Mario Curie died laet year of an obscure disease contracted while she helped her husband in hie pioneer experiments in radium.