MEDICAL CONGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 33, 9 February 1927, Page 8

MEDICAL CONGRESS

YESTERDAY'S- SESSIONS

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

DUNEDIN, Bth February. The Medical Congress was continued to-day, when several educative and valuable papers were read.

The work carried out at the Walter and Eliza Hill Institute for Research at Melbourne was dealt with by Dr. C. H. Kelleway. Dr. L. B. Bull and Professor Burton Cleland, both of Adelaide University, described research work concerned with the various anaemias, particularly pernicious anaemia.

Dr. G. M. Heydon, bacteriologist of the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine in Townsville, although not" present, contributed two papers, one on hookworm disease and the other on the discovery by Dr. Backhouse and himself of a rare fluke named paragonimiis. This fluke -was productive of illness in the human being, the dog, and the cat. Dr. Henry Jellett, of Christchurch (a previous master of Rotunda Hospital, the chief obstetrical hospital in Dublin), read a paper warning his colleagues against the abuse of the operation of caesarean section" as a means of delivering a woman of her baby. He dealt in detail with all the alleged indications leading to this operation, and showed how each one of these conditions could bo met by other means. Dr. A. M. Wilson (Melbourne) also dealt with the same subject. He emphasised the risk attending tho operation and pointed out that the risk was greatly increased.; when : complications were present.

Professor J. C. Windeyer, of Sydney agreed with Dr. Jellett that eaesarean section had been grossly overdone everywhere and particularly in America Dr. F. R. Ril e 7 (Dunedin) agreed in the main with tho previous speakers, but recounted the conditions under which he had thought it wise to do the operation. ; . -

Several other speakers testified to the fact that if ante-natal supervision were carried out consistently the necessity for submitting women to so risky an operation would disappear. Tuberculosis in children occasioned a long discussion, and the subject of infantile paralysis was thoroughly thrash-

_ Surgeon-Commander Dudley gave an interesting account of means of forecasting outbreaks ot diphtheria. He claimed that tho spread of infection depended on the relative number of immune persons and the number of susceptibles, and he showed how by a simple calculation he' could determine what he called the herd immunity index