FOR BETTER HEALTH

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 19, 18 October 1926, Page 10

FOR BETTER HEALTH

EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC

NEWSPAPERS MOST POWERFUL MEDIUM

London, October 15

Sir Thomas Holder, Physician to the Prince of Wales, in an address on the aims and methods of health education, asserted that tile newspapers were the most powerful medium for instructing the public in health matters “We must do our best,” he said, “to secure their co-operation.” He saw some possibility of an authoritative health column in the daily Press, but the newspapers must not clamour for signed articles. “While the Press might succeed in making us good journalists,” he added, “thev will make us bad doctors.” Publicity on behalf of doctors might lead individuals to the erroneous belief that the advertised doctor was a good man. It was in order to prevent this occurring that publicity of doctors must be avoided as far as possible. A sick man might safely conclude that a -doctor’s capacity was likely to be inverse ratio to the number of times his name appeared in the newspapers. A doctor might personally ’ yield to scores of invitations, cajolings, compliments, and threats of editors to write signed articles, if .it were not for the fear of losing what he valued most, namely, the confidence of bis colleagues and patients. The speaker visualised a representative control body designed to command public confidence, and including laymen, but he asserted that the complaint against the Medical Council was not its stringency, but its laxity.