A GREAT SERVICE

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 55, 7 March 1919, Page 8

A GREAT SERVICE

WHAT THE MEDICAL ASSOCIATION HAS DONE

Without an efficient medical service an army would be practically useless, and not only would the wounded suffer to a very great degree, but disease, in'its many forms, would become rampant. In common with the British and Allied armies, the New Zealand. Division, has had the assistance of an up-to-date medical service, and undoubtedly a very large number of lives have been saved by the untiring efforts of doctors and nurses. After expressing gratification for the ceasing of hostilities, and the success which attended the British and Allied arms during the great struggle, the New Zealand Medical. Journal has the following to say:—"The war has been a triumph for medical science. The medical service of the army, when untrammelled, has approached closely to perfection, and its success in checking preventable disease and in giving comfort and restoration to the sick and wounded has exceeded the highest hopes of the most sanguine minds. Our New Zealand Medical Corps has shared the honours with the parent service, and the profession in New Zealand has given more than one-third and nearly one-half of its members to. military service. The New Zealand branch of the Medical Association lias been privileged to help in the great cause. In the' early stages of the war the association, if it did not actually initiate, was at all events the main agency, by advocacy and financial assistance, to establish proper hospital accommodation in the camp at Trentham, and a committee of the association, after investigation, presented a report upon conditions arising out of the first serious epidemic of cerebro-spinal meningitis, which was adopted practically in its entirety by the Government. Hundreds of our members threw their practices to the winds and went away to serve the army. BEARING A HEAVY BURDEN. "Not a few gave their lives for the cause, and many others suffered permanent injury to their health. The doctors who remained behind undertook to the verge of exhaustion the heavy burden of attending medically to the needs of the civil population and of soldiers in camp and on home' service, and supplied medical ■ boards and medical examiners from the North Gape to the Bluff. Throughout, the association gave the utmost practical and moral support to the medical military,'administration, and even on the few occasions when its advice was rejected, notably on the question of the best and fairest way of maintaining a supply of doctors for the army from the ranks of a depleted and seriously overburdened profession, it accepted the situation as it was and worked for its success. We make this recital of some of the main parts of the work of our organisation during the war not to belaud one another, but because we all derive satisfaction from the recollection that we were privileged to have been of some material help to our country in a great crisis. We could not have done less, and we doubt if we could have done more. We may still be able to assist during the period *b£ demobilisation and reconstruction, and\we have no doubt of the continuation of the cordial relations that already exist between. General Henderson, Colonel Purdy, and the other administrative officers on the one liand and the association on the other."