UNIVERSITY STANDARDS,—DR BARNETT’S DISCLAIMER.

Evening Star, Issue 14495, 21 February 1911, Page 6

UNIVERSITY STANDARDS,—DR BARNETT’S DISCLAIMER.

TO THE EDITOR. yj r ] anl aware that Dr Barnett’s letter is a reply to your leaderette, and not to my letters, but as the latter gave rise to the former you will, I trust, let me say that if I had known that Dr Barnett was not advocating the University cf Manitoba as a standard 1 should not have written. In vour report of Dr Barnett's letter to the Council there are three general conclusions emphasised. No. 1 contains the following :— n Our medical school . compares favorably with the Canadian schools.” “At Montreal and Toronto . . . there is no great divergence in their curriculum and methods from our own.” “Winnipeg, a town more than double the size of Dunedin, has a medical school of good repute, but distinctly inferior to our own.” No. 2is obviously comparative. No. 3, which Dr Barnett does not give in his disclaimer, reads: —“In regard to hospital accommodation and management, I hold, and hold most strongly, that the Dunedin Hospital is a credit to this or any other city of like size. I know tho hospital too well to be blind to its defects, but I maintain that in the broad essentials requisite for its two primary objects —the treatment of the sick poor and the teaching of medical students—it is a thoroughly well found and progressive institution, and one that merits our confidence.” Even a fairminded person may be pardoned, I trust, for thinking that such a letter set up a comparison between the Canadian schools of medicine (particularly the one in Winnipeg) and that in Dunedin. If it does not do so, one may naturally wonder why the letter was written at all. Mv fear was not that the Council would base' a system of reform on the University of Manitoba, but that Dr Barnett’s opinions might be used to exclude tho Otago Medical School from the searching inquiry that the whole University stands in need of at the present time.—l am, etc., Taos. A. Hujtter. February 21.