DOCTORS AND CHIROPODISTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 September 1934, Page 10

DOCTORS AND CHIROPODISTS

B.M.A. REFUSES RECOGNITION. BOURNEMOUTH, July 22. Though many surgeons are associated with, the work of chiropodists, the official approval of the British Medical Associations is no t to he accorded them. ’ . This decision was arrived'at yesterday, at the annual conference, by the Representative Body of the association, presided over by Dr. E. .Kaye Le Fleming. It ran counter to the advice of the Council’s report, which recommended a measure of recognition to Chiropodists, confining their practice within specified limits. The question of the medical profession’s attitude towards various auxiliary services has imposed itself on the .attention of the association in recent years. Mid-wives, radiographers, and masseurs have already secured recognition. That recognition, . however, is conditional on their working under medical direction, whereas the successful opposition to the recognition of chiropodists Was founded largely on the contention that it would be impracticable to control them in such « way.

Ought a medical man to be consulted about a corn? was a question that cropped up at stages throughout the prolonged debate on chiropody. Some speakers considered that a. patient with a corn might appropriately be sent at once to a chiropodist, but' in the view of others a corn may have serious implications and be worthy of the doctor’s attention.

Besides chiropody, many matters related to the national public health services were discussed. In recommending a debate on the administration of drugs by midwives, Sir Henry Brackenbury, chairman of the council, stated that the proposal of the Central Midwives’ Board that, in certain conditions, a midwife should administer, drugs,- was under the consideration of the association.

Medical men drew attention to' the clangers of such administration of drugs, not ’ because of any diminution that might result to their own emoluments, but because of . their concern with the. suffering women. The dangers of the administration of chloroform or ether by any person except a doctor must persist until such administration was fool-proof. ’ Great hopes of its becoming foolproof were centred in the development of the new nitrous oxide and oxygen anaesthesia. If this development continued in the direction of patients administering it themselves the problem might be solved.

LIMITED TREATMENT. In a special report the Council stated th al. organisations for instruction in chiropody and the provision of' chiropodial treatment were springing up all over the country. There had been a meeting between representatives of the Council and of the Incorporated Society of Chiropodists, and the Council had come to the conclusion that it was desirable that the pro* fession should determine its future relationship with the practising chiropodist and whether it was possible and desirable to give the chiropodist a measure of recognition. Chiropody was defined by the Council as “the treatment of abnormal nails and all superficial . excrescences occurring on the feet, such as corns, warts, callosities and bunions.” They recommended that the medical profession should accord “a measure of re-

cognition” ' to approved chiropodists who accepted this definition, and confined their practice to the field indicated. Chiropodists must agree, it. was added, not to treat any patient who is under the care of a medical practitioner without his consent.

“A very ancient confraternity exercising a technique handed down from generation to generation” was the description of chiropodists given by Dr. R. L. Langdon-Down, of Teddington, who moved the recommendations. A fact on which he.laid stress was that the exercise of chiropody had been accepted, if not in specific terms, at least silently, by the medical profession.

The proposals of the Council were opposed by Dr. C. O. Hawthorne, of London; who is chairman of the Ethical Committee. Chiropodists, he said, were engaged in either an aesthetic enterprise or in a therapeutic method. If the former, they must be classed with the hairdresser, the manicurist, and those engaged in the secrets and mysteries of the beauty parlour. If,, on the other hand, chiropody came under the head of therapeutic method, it must be regarded as “unqualified practice.” The Association, ho urged, should not do anything calculated tomonfuse the public as between those.who had received a medical training and those who had not. The growth of foot hospitals was referred. to by Sir Henry Brackenbury, who supported the principle of recognition of chiropodist. The medical profession could prevent the continued growth of these hospitals only if those practising chiropody were subject to some control. “The layman knows when he has a corn just as well as the doctor could know it,” said Sir Henry; “a corn is not a case for medical diagnosis. If a person goes to a doctor about a corn, it is perfectly natural and proper for the doctor, if he chooses to do so, to send the patient to a chiropodist. “Briefly put, these recommendations of the report are designed to give the asociation an opportunity of keeping thp chiropodist in his place. Let us seize'it.”

Mr. H. S. Sbuttar, Marylebone (chair-maii-eldct of the Representative Body), insisted that this was a much bigger matter than that of warts and bunions; it was a question of the relation of the association to all ancillary services. They had' already recognised the midwives, radiographers and masseurs. The meeting, by 102 votes against 65, passed a resolution disapproving of giving official collective recognition to approved chiropodists in a more extended field than that of dealing with corns and callosities.