MEDICAL OFFICERS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18547, 24 November 1925, Page 15

MEDICAL OFFICERS.

FOR MENTAL DEPARTMENT. (fsou ocb own correspondent.) LONDON, October 15. Two appointments have been made to tho positions of Assistant Medical Officers for the New Zealand) Government Mental Hospitals Department. Dr. John Russell, 8.A., Ch.B., D.P.M., has definitely accepted one, and Dr. G. W. Will, M.8., Ch.B. (N.Z.), Captain, R.A.M.C, who is in India has still, at the time of writing, to notify the High Commissioner of his acceptance. . Dr. Russell, who is 38 years of age and ntarried, was born of English parents, at Insch, Aberdeenshire. He was educated at Insch High Grade School and Mill Hill School, London. Afterwards he was at Christ's College, Cambridge. A year after going up to Cambridge he joined the Army and served with the Gordon Highlanders from 1915 to 1918. He returned to Cambridge in 1918 and took his B.A. degree in 1919. He entered St. Thomas's Hospital at the end of 1919, and then took his Ch.B. at Cambridge in July, 1923. After two terms as locum tenens at mental hospitals, he was appointed Sixth Medical Officer in the London County Council Mental Hospital at Long Groove, Epsom. He has had the opportunity to spend six months as clinical assistant at the Maudsley Hospital for border-line cases, and has taken the diploma in psychological medicine. Superintendents under whom he has served speak of him as a keen and conscientious worker. While he was at St. Thomas's Hospital he was captain of the Rugby football team. Dr. G. W. Will is a New Zealander who studied first in Dnnedin. In 1912 he was relieving officer and then a permanent officer at the Auckland Mental Hospital. He resigned, however, in 1913, in order to come to London. He was for three months second assistant at tho Metropolitan Asylum Board's Asylum at Leavesden, leaving there to take the position of senior assistant at the St. Pancras (North) Infirmary. He obtained a temporary commission in the R.A.M.C. in October 1914, and saw service in France from July, 1915, until the end of the war, with the exception of a period of three months when he was recovering from a wound. For a year he was in charge of the medical* division of the 32nd C.C.S., and had a good deal of experience of shell shock cases. In 1921 he received a regular commission in the R.A.M.C, and went to Netley Hospital, D Block, where mental cases are treated. In 1922 he was with the Army on the Rhine. At the end of 1922 he returned, to London and took a specialist's course for six months in neurology and mental diseases, and passed out with distinction, taking the certificate of the Medico-Psychological Association. He was posted to the Queen Alexfndra Military Hospital as neurologist and specialist in mental diseases, a position which he held until March. 1924, when he was transferred to India as specialist in mental diseases for the Northern Command of India. In his present position, Dr. Will has to travel very long distances, and for this and other reasons, it is impossible for his wife to live in India with him. He is anxious to make a change to the more settled conditions of life in New Zealand.