ORDER OF ST. JOHN

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 294, 7 September 1932, Page 5

ORDER OF ST. JOHN

Appointments Announced SOME RECENT ACTIVITIES !■ The Chief Commissioner for the Dominion of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, has' approved of 'the following appointments in the Wellington district;— Nelson Ambulance Division; Ernest Ashton to be ambulance officer. Palmerston North Ambulance Division : Dr. C. W. Peach, M. 8., C.M., Edin., to be divisional surgeon; Francis H. Holz, to'be divisional superintendent; Gerald M. L. Dredge, to be ambulance officer; Leslie O. Wallis, to be div. secretary and treasurer, and. P. A. Milverton, to be div. storekeeper. . ■ The following items, covering recent activities of the Order of St. John, in New Zealand and abroad, are supplied to “The Dominion”: — ' ' t ; A tablet to the memory of the late Mrs. C. Smith, president of the Auckland branch of the League of Remembrance, has been placed in the leagues hcadqua lrs in London. Mrs. Smith was at one time lady corps superintendent of the brigade at Auckland, and was a regular visitor at competitions, etc., throughout the Dominion. She will be remembered by many of the older members as a zealous worker for St. John. .... .. Recently the charitable instincts of the Order have been developed in a; new direction. It assumed control of-the_Bri tish Humane Association, and Us .principal activity, the London, Light and Electrical Clinic in Pimlico, on the death ot its' founder, Mr. Campbell Johnston, a Commander'of the Order. The clinic is fully equipped with the most apparatus for the various forms of light and electrical treatment, with an rnhalatorum for maladies of/the chest. During last year over 173,000 treatments, were given, and the clinic is capable of supplying 1000 treatments a. day. . One of the foundations of the Order of St John is the Ophthalmic Hospital at Jerusalem, the original home of the venerable order. In 1882 a site/for a hospital 'was granted by the Turkish Government. From the first, it was decided that the hospital should be devoted to ophthalmia and those other diseases of the eyes which infest the countries of the East. The hospital was opened in 188 b, and down to the outbreak of the Great War .in 1914 no fewer than 199,051 patients had received treatment. During the Great Mar the Turkish authorities converted the premises into an ammunition dump and at the end blew it up.. . , * With the. Armistice the work of restoration was at once put in hand, and dn 1919 the hospital was formally reopened by Lord Allenby. Recent new buildings have been added to the original hospital and clinics have been established at Acre, Beersheba, Gaza, Nablus, Ramleh and Tulkarem, at which places diseases can be treated. The value of the work which is being done by the Knights of : St. John in the Holy Land is best exemplified by the fact that nearly ,20.000 patients ai year pass, through their hospital and over 16,000 through the clinics. The hospital is universally regarded os one of the best staffed and best equipped in the East