WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 100, 22 January 1926, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

If the City Council would take The Dominion’s advice and have these inquests on municipal jobs before the money is spent it might be a lot more to the point.

Wellington weather is always disappointing—when it feels like a hundred in the shade the thermometer refuses to get out of the seventies.

Although Europe is having such a frigid spell at present it is interesting to know that Old Sol is working overtime. Mr. G. V. Hudson, of Karori, who has kept tally of sunspots for about thirty years past, says he does not remember any previous period in which the sun lias been in such a state of activity as during the past six weeks. Two big sunspots are now visible to the naked eye. They don’t look very big, perhaps, through a piece of smoked glass, but the bigger of them measures about 80,900 miles by 50,000 miles, and the smaller is about 80,000 miles long. It was in November that this period of activity began, but it is since Christmas particularly that the sun lias been making the pace. What the sunspots mean exactly Mr. Hudson prefers to leave the various rival theorists to determine.

A very old battle is ended with the decision announced in the news to-day that Dr. Axliam is eligible for reinstate, ment on the medical register in Britain. Dr. Axham’s offence is that after watching the woncjgrful work in manipulative surgery of Mr. Herbert Barker he said: “You need an anaesthetist to help you, and I will do it.” As .Mr. Barker was not on the medical register this was a serious step for the doctor to take, and when the matter came to the notice of the General Medical Council it declared Dr. Axliam guilty of “infamous conduct in a professional respect,” and struck him off the medical registet.

It was in 1912 that Dr. Axhatn was thus, punished, and the battle for hit reinstatement and the recognition of Mr. Barker has been going on for years. In 1921 it was discovered that under some ancient statute the Archbishop of Canterbury had power to confer Lambeth degrees, without examination, and a petition for a Lambeth medical degiee for Mr. Barker was signed by three hundred members ot Parliament, including the Lord Chancellor of the day and about a dozen past aud present Cabinet Ministers, to say nothing of leading lawyers, admirals, generals, and so forth. The Archbishop decided that to revive these obsolete degrees was not the proper way out, but said lie hoped some other way would be found. The following year in the Birthday honours list Mr. Barker became Sir Herbert Barker, this honour following on a request by four eminent surgeons.

Mr. Barker was to have been a lawyer, but early in life he became interested in bone-setting, and in the course of his practice has successfully treated over 40,000 cases of affections of the joints. He lias never had a medical education, but where the doctors failed he was successful. ~

In a leading article about twelve years ago the London “Times” stated Mr. Barker and Dr. Axliam “have been pursued by professional jealousies which have tried hard to ruin the careers of both.” The “Times” also said: “Mr. Barker has cured a great many responsible persons whom recognised and even eminent surgeons have been trying to cure for years without success.*” On the other side Sir Rickman Goldie and other eminent medical men declared that Mr. Barker was “justly dubbed a quack,” and that hit prosecution was warranted in the public interest. Dr. Axhain, who is to be restored to the register after fourteen years’ disqualification, is now 87, and past practicing, but the stigma he hat borne for so long has been deeply felt and resented by him.

A great deal of correspondence has lately appeared in the London ‘Tinies on Dr. .ijdiaro’’ case, including a characteristic letter bv Air. Bernard Shaw. Air. Shaw says his own efforts to call attention to the case “result only in what I must call editorial imbecilities to the effect that I have 'a down on doctors,’ and that every q«?ck would have to be registered if .Sir Herbert Barker were registered, which is about as sensible as saying that because Brahms was made a Doctor of Music without doing the curricular exercises in counterpoint the universities are » .logically bound to confer degrees on all our street piano men,” * * *

Another contributor to this illutninat'insr correspondence was Dr. Graham Little, secretary of the P a . rliame “ t Medical Committee Dr. Little mad some severe references to the methods of unregistered practitioners, and added. “A non-medical friend of mine quite tecently, lelated to me the following experience. He is the subject of a £?vous tic of the eyelid, which neurologists have pronounced incurable. Dissatisfied, perhaps quite naturally,with this verdict, lie sought the aid of an osteopathic practitioner in this town Mv friend paid a preliminary fee 50 guineas before any treatment was given, but this fee was to include subsequent treatment. He was deeply.nnnressed at his very first visit by findng displayed in the waiting-room » carefullv-tvped list of patients for the d'av in* which he noted, with gratificaHon’and awe, that His own modest name was flanked by the names of™ queens, three duchesses, and a. further sprinkling of notable persons. To this came an intriguing bv Mr. Roche: The concrete deal of'publ'ic dissatisfaction. We ara told that the doctor’s friend had an which the profession declared ailment altogether unknown "... S ,“, d “S’ f.h Ind a distinguished clientele. We are 'not told whether the man was cured One is frequently led to suspect that this matter, which is of primary interest to jhe public, is of secondary interest to doctors.”

Janie was returned from tlie Home of the Feeble-minded to the Orphans Home, as the doctor’s examination had proved her merely “subnormal. Said Mamie to Anna in a burst ot confidence and gossip.: “Janie was sent away to be an idiot, but she couldn’t pass and had to come back.” STRENGTH. What lies I read, that men of strength Have keen and penetrating looks That, flashing here and flashing there. Command success—what foolish books! For when we go to life we find That men and dogs that fight till death Are sleepv-eved and look so calm We wonder if they live by breath I Love, too, must hold her saucy tongue, And turn on us two sleepy eyes, . And full, like books, of pretty lies. To prove she is no painted doll,

—W. EL Davies