MEDICAL PROFESSION

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 80, 5 April 1926, Page 7

MEDICAL PROFESSION

UNQUALIFIED PRACTITIONERS

DISCUSSION IN THE HOUSE,

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, 12th February.

An interesting discussion on the merits and demerits of unqualified medical practitioners took place in the House of Commons when Dr. Little, who represents London University, moved a resolution in favour of the appointment of a committee to inquire into the whole position of irregular practice in medicine and surgery: He said that the spread of unqualified medical practice was a fact that must be admitted. The reasons were many, but perhaps the most important was the length of the medical curriculum. It wa« not true, as was sometimes represented, that British medicine was a system ofy.knowledge confined to the British Islands and the British Empire; it was part of international medicine. It had one distinction, viz., that its students were taught with the patient always in view. Another important quality of international medicine was that any discovery made by one individual was immediately made known to the rest of the world. The note of unqualified practice was secrecy of the methods employed. (Cries of "Not at all.") ■

Osteopaths were most in the public eye at present, and were in many respects very different from other groups ot unqualified medical practitioners, lv the first place, they claimed to be as fully trained in medicine and surgery as were the ordinary student* in our medical schools. But nine-tenths of their training was received in ■ the .United States. Their, system was based on. a formula or theory propounded fifty years ago by an obscure medical practitioner in one of the small towns in the Western States of America. That theory had been examined and had been rejected by international medicine, and nowhere more thoroughly than in the United States. • The medical profession was not unduly concerned, and it was not from their point of view that the House ought toapproach the subject. It was not the rich but the poor who suffered mo3t from theso . irregular practices. No ono could have held, as he had for nearly thirty years, the position of a hospital physician Without being really saddened by the cases of terrible neglect of the poor due to unqualified medical treatment. He referred to the dispensing chemist, the optician who pretended to be an oculist, to the dentist who was a quack and who fitted new plates upon horrible septic stumps which were poisoning the whole syatem. No robbery was worse than the robbery of unqualified practice; no spoliation of the poor wiis more horrible than that). He thought it would astonish th» House to learn that, with the exception of England and Germany and five of the Australian States, practically all _th* countries of the civilised world penalised unqualified practice. For that reason ha ■■asked for an inquiry which would allow this country to reconsider its standpoint on this matter compared to that of th» rest of the world.

Commander Hilton Youpg (Lib., Norwich), seconding the motion, said that osteopaths were guilty of inflicting something in the nature of an imposition on the public. 'He had recently met a fellowmember who had been treated by an osteopath for neuralgia. "I asked him hovr' he treated him, and Jie said, 'He asked me to lie down on the sofa, and then pulled my-leg.' " Why should the practice of medicine differ from that of the solicitor ? No unqualified man could act as a solicitor with- j out incurring heavy penalties. CURED OF TENNIS ELBOW. Mr. Cyril Atkinson; a K.C., who sits for Altrincham, submitted an amendment which would make the object of the inquiry "the recognition and registration of manipulative practitioners having approved qualifications," and observed that ho had -been cured .of tennis elbow by an "irregular" after the "orthodox" had failed. Dr. Shiels, a Socialist from Edinburgh —heavy in form, deliberate in speech, who began life in a Board school and is a Fellow and ex-president of the Royal Medical Society, with also much war service to his credit—took the line that even Dr. Little's motion was unnecessary. It was an "offensive defensive" adopted by the medical men in the House as a result of recent attacks. It was an able exposition of the super-professional view. MR. N. CHAMBERLAIN CURES HIMSELF. Mr. Neville Chamberlain, speaking as Minister o£ Health rather than for_ the Government, was unable to (support cither motion or amendment. His attitude briefly is that if people want to bo treated by an osteopath, a chiropractor, or any other irregular practitioner there is no reason why they should not so do. His objection to the amendment lay in the difficulty of defining the proper qualification for inclusion in a register of recognised osteopaths. It would be necessary, apparently, to rely on the diplomas given by American colleges over which we had no control—and that was an impossible basis to accept. He warned Mr. Atkinson not to draw too many inferences from the fact that he had been cured of tennis elbow by an osteopath sinoe he himself (Mr. Chamberlain) hud suffered from the same thing, and had cured himself without consultinor anybody at all." (Laughter.) :