AN IMPUTATION ANSWERED

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3160, 11 August 1917, Page 7

AN IMPUTATION ANSWERED

Reference was made in the House of Representatives yesterday to the case of Private Hill, a returned soldier, who suf- ! fered injury from an X-Tay burn while undergoing treatment in the Dannevirke Hospital. Dr. Thacker (Christchurch East) said that the facts of the case had not been made clear. The soldier had. been placed under an imputation of having contracted disease through his own fault, and he was entitled to fuller vindication that he had yet received. The Hon. G.. W. Russell, Minister of Public Health, said he would like to deal with the matter at once. Private Hill was a soldier who had been improperly treated with X-rays in the Dannevirke Hospital. Ho took action against the Hospital Board for .£3009 damages. The case was settled out of Court, the Hospital Board to pay .£650 and the Government J1650. A report had been circulated that the soldier had suffered from a complaint not due to military service. "I wish to say, on behalf of tTiis soldier, who was wounded in the servico of his country, that no suggestion has ever appeared in any official papers or in any medical Teport that this man was suffering from anything but the wounds ho received on service, and the burns he sustained from X-rays. I think I should ray at once, as Minister of Public Health, with a full knowledge of ITifl facts, that no statement of the kind suggested can be made against this man."