HISTORY OF THE REQUEST

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 103, 28 October 1933, Page 5

HISTORY OF THE REQUEST

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) STRATFORD, October 27. Commenting on the discussion when the deputation of Otago members waited on the Ministers of Finance and Health in reference to the obstetrical hospital, Dr. Doris Gordon said that a statement credited to the Minister of Health that the request for a hospi-. tal was a comparatively recent development, arising since the establishment of a chair of obstetrics, was not correct, nor. indicative of Mr. Young's interest in the welfare of women and children. The chair of obstetrics, said Dr. Gordon, was established on May 1, 1930, when women had handed over a. cheque for £25,000,' but as far back as September, 1928, Mr. Young had received the Obstetrical Society executive and discussed in an informal way tho possibility of securing a hospital. Although unable to offer any financial promises, the Minister lvid given helpful advice and had been i'ecenly interested in the possibility of enlisting the help of women to finance cither the construction of a hospital or the endowment of a professorial .chair. The first official request to. Parliament for this hospital was: made in February, 1929, by a deputation appointed at a gathering of over one hundred New Zealand graduates of medicine to convey to the Minister of Health tho pressing need that this hospital should be made up to date and brought into line with similar institutions overseas. These graduates came from all over the Dominion, and .represented every branch of medical art, and the majority of them had no immediate interest in the practice of obstetrics, yet they were unanimous in their request that the one "blot" on the New Zealand Medical School, the "primitive-" obstetrical teaching facilities, should immediately bo remedied. This deputation was sympathetically received by tho Minister of Health, at that' date Mr. A. J. Stallworthy, and in August, 1929, it was announced that the Government bad sanctioned a grant for tho hospital. "It was only after Cabinet made this decision," said Dr. Gordon, "that the Obstetrical Society shaped.its endowment appeal which culminated in the endowment of an obstetrical chair.''