DOCTOR'S DEFENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1927, Page 10

DOCTOR'S DEFENCE

BITTER LAY CEITICISM

G. B. SHAW'S ROBUST

HEALTH

UNFOUNDED ALLEGATIONS

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Post.")

DUNEDIN, This Day. Vigorously defending the medical profession against unfair lay criticism, the president, Dr. L. E. Barnett, in his inaugural address at the Medical Congress, had some pointed things to say. He had the impression, he said at one stage, that these intensely bitter and vociferous critics of; their views were not only mentally perversely active but also abnormally healthy in body, and that consequently they had not had their crude conclusions confounded by any dangerous and harmful malady, accompanied by the soothing ministrations of a capable doctor. He felt certain, for instance, that if George Bernard Shaw, who though undoubtedly a dramatic genius was always vituperative where doctors were concerned, had at any time suffered from a perforated duodenal ulcer or gangrenous appendicitis—(laughter)— or pleurisy with effusion, he would not have written so mordantly and cynically about medical practice. They judged it wise to refrain from responding in the lay Press to calumniation of this kind. The piquant controversies that otherwise would arise could produce nothing but confusion. They were quite prepared to be judged by the majority. Let their lives and their actions suffice to discredit their detractors. Criticism by an opposition party was a good thing in the people's Parliament, and it was a good thing in the parliament that dealt with the doings ~of doctors.

They must give consideration to the honest and reasonable criticism of the opponents of their policy, whether that criticism came from lay or medical sources; but they could not help feeling resentment at the publication of gross and unwarranted statements that heaped indignities upon them, and accused them of rank dishonesty; allegations, for instance, that they were a great trade union whose chief aim was to keep the wages of its doctor members at the highest possible level; that they strangled competition by keeping out of this union numerous and wonderful unorthodox healers who had not conformed to their requirements of a thorough medical education; that they advocated vaccinations, operations, inoculations, animal experiments, and so only only for the benefit of their sordid selves; that they only gave gratuitous service to hospitals and the sick '■ poor because it gave them prestige and free advertisement —that was to say, they climbed over the backs of the poor into the pockets of the rich. (Laughter.) f