A GREAT RECORD.

Evening Star, Issue 21965, 27 February 1935, Page 8

A GREAT RECORD.

Whether it was extraneous or not, it was the pleasantest possible addition to the formal proceedings at the opening of the conference of the Medical Association (New Zealand branch) last night, which took the form of a presentation to Sir Lindo Ferguson from his ex-stndents on the occasion of his fiftieth year of association with the doininion’s Medical School. Three hundred -medical graduates, scattered throughout New Zealand and as fai afield as Malaya, China, and the British Isles, who had all learned from Sir Lindo, contributed to the address of eulogy and to his fund for medical research. which it was suggested should be known henceforth as the Sir Lindo Ferguson fund. The tribute was well deserved, and the address could not have been worded more justly or more happily than it was. It is a remarkable record which Sir Lindo can claim, to have been associated with the school for fifty years, from the tinie when it was a .small building with some eighty pupils, and its dean for the last twentyone. The address recalled how. in the day of small beginnings, “ Sir Lindo had foresight. He visualised an institution that was to grow and to become a predominant feature in the scholastic life of New Zealand, a school that was to send its graduates all over the world, bearing with them, may we say, the hall-mark of New Zealand ' medicine. . . He planned a new Medical School, and the present magnificent buildings are a monument to his vision and his forceful and tactful personality. Largely as the result of his labours, the status of the Otago Medical School is now unquestioned throughout the world.” Sir Lindo has always planned, not as a result of sudden emergencies, not for immediate needs, but for years to come. He has done that with the statesman’s mind, which is rare. Apart from that it is a most striking fact that, in the course of fifty years, something like 1,000 students have passed through his hands. His reply to the honour paid him was most felicitous, and the hope of all must be that, for many years yet, he will see his school grow in usefulness and prestige, the best reward of all his unflagging work for it.