"NOTHING PROVED"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 7

"NOTHING PROVED"

SPAHLINGER TREATMENT

SYDNEY DOCTOR'S CRITICISM.

(«T TELEGRAPH,—SPECIAL 10 TBI POST.)

AUCKLAND, This Day".'----j In view of the publicity being given to the Spahlinger serum as a cure for ! tuberculosis, and the cable messages from London which have announced that Professor Spahlinger is in financial difficulties, and his research work in danger of interruption, the opinion of Dr. W. Camac Wilkinson, a prominent physician, formerly of Sydney, i B of particular interest. Dr. Wilkinson has spent some" timo in England, and Canada, studying and treating this disease, and is a passenger by E.M.S. Niagara en route to Sydney. While in England he came into personal contact with Professor Spahlinger, and his views are against acceptance of ,the treatment as a solution of the world-wide problem. Dr. Wilkinson, in an interview yesterday, said that Professor Spahlinger was not a medical man, and had to Bepend on the conclusions of others. He was. thus unable to tell the effect on the disease o;f a remedy which it was extremely difficult to apply. "There has never been any satisfactory evidence of the value of Spahlinger's method," said Dr. Wilkinson, "and even if results have been ; apparently satisfactory there is no disease in which we have to be so careful in drawing conclusions from a_few cases. The mostimportant test is the test of time, and .Spahlinger has •produced no evidence that would pass in a court of law." Dr. Wilkinson added that no one now believed that any remedy for tuberculosis could be proved'to be of real value in less than five or probably ten years. The result was that anyone who attacked the problem must be ready to devote that time to finding a solution. He himself had recognised' that fact 30 years ago, and did not publish anything on the subject until about 15 years later. Spahlinger had treated, he thought, about 12 cases through other men in London, and these men were foolish enough to give a favourable opinion upon the method two or three years after they tried it, so that their judgment was self^condemned.

"My. summing up of the matter is that Spahlinger has proved nothing," added Dr. Wilkinson, "and that within the last few years work has been done, controlled by most exacting conditions, which seems to prove that the methdd of Koch properly applied and controlled by observation of recent years upon the nature of immunity 1 and the means ofsecuring it, will displace to a very large extent the general hygienic methods which have been in vogue for the last 30 or 40 years."

Dr. Wilkinson concluded by saying that he felt justified, as a medical man, m protesting against a man who was not ■a medical man proposing a scheme not justified by facts, and because the pub lie and even the Press had been foolish enough to think of spending public money upon a scheme that was hot justiVi ♦ty jnil iy esPS i.c?w, P* ■ experiments U»t had been published. .