MEDICAL SCHOOL SESSION BEGINS

Evening Star, Issue 16990, 12 March 1919, Page 6

MEDICAL SCHOOL SESSION BEGINS

DEAN OF FACULTY'S ADDRESS. PANEGYRIC OP DR COLQUHOUN. Tho year's work at the Otago Medical Schon' "commenced to-dav, and this mornimr V H. L. Ferguson, Dean ot the Medic... Faculty, delivered the opening address in Allen Hall, where there was a full gathering of students. The entering class this year is about 70, and the total of students at various stages oi the course The Chancellor of the University (the Rev A. Cameron), tho professors, and many member, of the University Council were* present. . Dr Ferguson, in welcoming students,, said he' had hoped to have Dr Colquhoun deliver the opening address, but. untor-, tunately he was not in town During the past year many changes had taken place in the school, and outside. Those students now entering upon the course were beginning work relieved of the shadow ot the great war which had so seriously darkened the outlook of their predecessors dining tho past four years. Their work would be undertaken in more favorable circumstances. There would be the full complement of teachers again, and the strain ought to be less. .Moreover, the. curriculum which was introduced four years ago. and which had caused a certain amount of dislocation, was now in full working order, and students' careers ought to run smoothlv. During the year the school had lost the services of two of its oldest teachers. Dr Roberts had retired after long service, in which he had been of the greatest value to the school, and had made himself beloved by all tho students. (Applause.) Another loss more recent, and one which the school would feel deeply, was that incurred in the retirement of Dr Colquhoun. As Dr Colquhoun's oldest colleague, he wished to say something of his work. There remained only one class that had had personal training from the man who had trained so many of their predecessors. The remaining classes, and those students who were to come, would remember Dr Colquhoun's work only as a tradition handed down. He would be a j most difficult man to replace. He had left an important mark on the profession and on the community by what he had taught | the graduates of the school, who had gone | out all over the Dominion. It was not so much what he had said, but the example ho had'set—in his courtesy and tenderness to patients, for instance. Students saw patients treated in the Hospital, and until they took no practice that was the onlv ■way they could learn how a patient should bo addressed and treated. Whether the teachers were rough or sympathetic, thoughtful or brutal, made all the difference in the practice of a school. It was [ in this matter that the school was under 1 such a deep debt to Dr Colquhoun. Some of bis old pupils now present, when thev cast back to their student days, would realise how much their careers had been influenced by Dr Colquhoun's example. He was goinz to state the seeming paradox that one of Dr Colquhoun's greatest virtues for teaching in a modern school was that he had learned medicine before modem methods of diagnosis and treatment were at his call. He had learned his medicine from men who had the tradition j of a very, very minute personal observation, and the inculcation of the faculty of close observation and correct inference from observation was of the very greatest importance in medicine. Thero was a lot of the Sherlock Holmes method in medicine, and it was on close observation of that kind that the traditions of schools of medicine were built up. Dr Colquhoun had done a great deal to build up in the Otago school these traditions of dose personal observation. Otago was vonnj;. but it had been making ta-aditiortS fast during tho past five or six years. Some six years ago there was a small-pox epidemic in the colony, and this was the first opportunity the' school had to "make good." All the seniors had done good work, during tho epidemic, in the North. Then, when the war came, their students were very anxious to go. and the authorities had the greatest difficulty in retaining them. All those who put aside their personal anxiety to go. and stayed behind to render themselves fit for more important duties by completing their course, were establishing tho tradition of personal subordination of their wishes to what was known to he the public good. Again, quite recently, we had a serious epidemic, and the students had been very useful. It was the first time the school could feel that a-s an organised body it was working for the public good. It was a lesson in the necessity always incumbent on a medical man, of sacrificing his own comfort and facing risk to fight disease in any form, wherever ho met it. He was not going to praise tho students for that work. It was what everybody expected of them. If any were to receive praiso for the services which saved the situation, it was the nurses and tho V.A.D.'s.—(Applause). So far as students were concerned he was proud to say that they had all realised it was their job. But it was not in tho same sense the job of the women who, after doing their own work, went out to feed the sick, scrub tho floors, wash the babies, and tend their stricken fellow citizens. These were the heroines who pulled the community through, and it was as well that tho public should know that the medical profession quito appreciated to whom the credit was due. He had so far been referring to positive traditions, but thero were negative traditions, too, which in the great universities were regarded as moro important. These traditions were formulated in the brief phrase " *t is net done." Tn this college it was desirable to create the atmosphere denoted by this phrase. He liad been asked to brinp this matter before the students. Graduates who had left the school had in some cases created an unfavorable impression .by their lack of manners. AYc hoard a ereat deal about lack of manners in small things. It was a failing in the Dominion. ' The authorities wou'd look to the girl graduates to lick the men into shape. (Laugh-tt-r.) In conclusion, the dean referred "to the importance of the Officers' Training Corps, to the importance of the social side m university work, and to tho, loss the college had sustained in the death of graduates during the epidemic. He enumerated in this connection Dr C'ruickshank, Dr Mary Dowling. Dr Jack Sale, Dr Fergus Paterson, Dr Short. Dr Little, Dr Matthews, and Dr fJ'Sullivan. The Chancellor voiced the council's greatappreciation of the services of Dr Colquhoun to the University. It seemed to h:m that such seiviow. extending over a period of 35 years, should be recognised in a more public' manner. Surely, when Ike Government were thinking of reccmmend'ng to His Majesty for recognition the names of citi'/ens who ought to "be honored, the services of a man like Dr Colquhoun ought to be seriously considered and 'generously rewarded. (Applause.) He hoped some thing would b© done to mark the appreciation of the University and of the community. There remained the pleasure of j receiving the travelling scholar, the BatI clielor merror ; il ••■nvVi't. nv.d the Domin i ion medical bursars for the year. Two students wci~ e H ua.l ior the travelling ■scholarship of £l5O for one year—lvan M'D. Allen and Louis A. Bennett —and he hoped the Senate would give two scholarships ; the Batehelor medallist was Henry Mayall Ludd. Mr Cameron read the noirjinations for the medical bursaries,' which have been published alxe-ady.