REMARKABLE CAREER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 147, 23 June 1937, Page 14

REMARKABLE CAREER

A judgment of tf 3 Saint Quentia Court has put an end to the extra* ordinarly successful career of a doctor who had the one one weak point-of'bo« ing without academic qualifications. . After the Great War, in which h« was wounded three times and men* tioned in dispatches. Rene Hecker* originally, an ironmonger's clerk, set up in the Aisne Department as "a doctor and rapidly acquired a large practice of devoted patients. By degrees he became official physician to the Gendarmerie, to the Prefecture,\to the railway companies, and to the local representatives of the Ministeries of War and of Pensions. When at lasthis status was challenged he was unable to produce his diploma. He had acquired it, he said at Strasbourg but ' it. had been mislaid during the war. Though he was unable to substantiate this story his patients remained true to him, and hundreds of them volunteered to testify that he was much tha ablest doctor they had known.- The Court, however, found Hecker guilty of illegally practising medicine and usurping the title of doctor. He was fined £100 and ordered to pay £50 damages; to the .Medical: Association, of the Aisne Department.