‘Loss Of Initiative, Fear Of Change’

Press, Volume C, Issue 29634, 3 October 1961, Page 16

‘Loss Of Initiative, Fear Of Change’

(Ntw Ztaland Prut Astoeiation)

TAURANGA, October 2. New Zealand was the only country in toe world where change was feared, said Dr E. W. Hutcheson, of Tauranga, to delegates at the annual conference of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors at Tauranga today. “I believe that the reason for this loss of initiative ; s the state of mind engendered by toe welfare State,” Dr Hutcheson said. Dr. Hutcheson, who spoke on “A Changing World,” said that he agreed with toe comments by Sir John Allum. made in Auckland on his return last week from overseas, that, in spite of fears of war throughout the world, there should be nothing bu: confidence, and an awareness that these were exciting and challenging times. Since toe United Kingdom’s suggestion that it should enter the European Common Market, th* attitude in New Zealand had been one of despair, rather than a constructive attitude, Dr. Hutcheson said. Complacency “I would like to take a look at this small world of ours,' he said. “We are complacent, but there are nogrounds to be complacent. The Western world is mentally and physically sick. A large proportion of Western people need psychiatric treatment, and physical sickness is in crewing. Western society U losing its moral standards, especially under the slow corrosion of luxury, “In contrast, the Communkt world is gaining in virility through hardship- They

are stepping up all aspects of life through hard work,” Dr. Hutcheson said. “In my own world of medicine, hospital life Is becoming static under the domination of full-time Government departments,” he said. “But medicine is never static. Many facts I was taught as a youngster have been proved fallacies. We are finding that antibiotics such as penicillin ar* losing their effectiveness as restis'ant strains of bacteria develop. “In our own hospital, and in hospitals throughout New Zealand. we are spending millions to erect monuments to the diseases caused by our environment.

They lived today in a society where stress was the major cause of disease, said Dr. Hutcheson. The interplay of mind and body was responsible for the form the disease took, whether it were an ulcer, asthma, coronary thrombosis, or one of the “endless list” of nervous diseases.

"The trouble is that the sufferers are constantly fighting a way of life,'* he said. “They think the world is trying to put them down. It is the environment we have developed, but we have to learn to live in it.

“It is unfortunate that people try to find the answer for these mental ills in physical cures. After going the rounds of the doctors, they usually fall back on the faith healers,'* Dr. Hutcheson said.