STRUGGLE AGAINST PREJUDICE

Evening Star, Issue 19776, 28 January 1928, Page 12

STRUGGLE AGAINST PREJUDICE

CIS HERBERT BARKER TELLS HIS STORY In his book, ‘Leaves From IMyLife,’ just published, Sir Herbert Barker, the tamo us manipulative surgeon, tells not only of his methods, Ins cases, and his struggle for recognition, but of the fight for manipulative surgery itself. “Human nature,” iie says _ in his book, “even in highly scientific society, does not change very much horn age to age, and the man who ventures, to leave the beaten track-or to undertake investigations in the hinterland ■ of surgery or any other science .will find that conservative minds and veested interests' will view him with disfavor, oppose him, malign him, and, if possible, break him. I was nut the lirst, and 1 am fully aware that 1 shall not be the last victim of orthodoxy in circles scientific, theological, or artistic. “My own indictment against the General Medical Council has been an unvarying one. That indictment is that thev have utterly and complo-ely failed to fulfil their duty—-so far as manipulative surgery is concerned. “They penalised the one broadminded, courageous member of the faculty who ventured to study these methods and to approve of them. They actually allowed him to die under the stigma of professional dishonor . . . “So far from securing _ the '.raining of the medical profession in what every surgeon . admits to-?be:a most-valuable department," manipulative surgery, the faculty in the past has been the., o.nc insurmountable obstacle to. the spread of a practical knowledge of its methods among'' the rank and file of ’ surgeons.” ‘ ' “lb. is impossible, comments ‘.the Times,’ when reading the long and painful story of Hr Axham, as Sir Herbert Barber tells it, not to deplore the stupidity of those who failed to restore that physician to the register. Had Dr Axham’s name been registered on the'day of' his death it would have been possible to forgive and forget with a good conscience. “Forgetfulness and even forgiveness may come in time, but the members of the General Medical Council would be ill-advised to think that the public has dismissed Dr Axham from its mind. There exists still in the minds of a very large number of laymen a feeling that the General Medical Council lacks, to some extent, the quality of mercy. Sir Herbert Barker’s book is not likely to mitigate that feeling.” As to his first case Sir Herbert tells how, when aged eighteen, on a voyage to Canada, a passenger fell and dislocated his elbow. The ship’s surgeons failed to give relief, and Sir Herbert was allowed to try and see what he could do. The author says: “Trusting to an instructive guid-

ance and using my common sense, I executed what .1 deemed to he the necessary hold and leverage, and in a trice something ‘gave,’ ami the arm resumed its normal shape. My first professional operation was successfully accomplished.” We like, too, the story of one of his early woman patients as told by Sir Herbert:— “She came to me limping heavily with two sticks. Without an amestbetic 1 reduced the derangement; the patient was immediately able to walk normally, and leit my house carrying her sticks under her arm. “On arriving home she told her medical man what had happened. He was furious. ‘So you have been to that quack?’ he said. Tho lady then bared her uninjured knee, and the doctor carefully examined it. ‘The knee is not a bit better,’ he sai'ch ‘ Barker has simply made you think it is better.’ “ ‘But, doctor, it was the other knee you treated, and here it is; would you like to examine it?’” Many famous men and women who ns patients could only he. cured by Sir Herbert Barker’s methods flit through the pages of his book- with their interesting experiences.