DOCTOR WITH NO DIPLOMA

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 June 1937, Page 10

DOCTOR WITH NO DIPLOMA

1 PHYSICIAN TO POLICE I PARIS. April 27. I A judgment of the Saint-Quentin | Court has put an end to the extraor- [ dinarily successful career of a doctor | who had the one weak point of being without academic qualifications. After the Great War, in which he was wounded three times and mentioned in despatches, Rene Hecker,-or-iginally an ironmonger’s clerk, set up in the Aisne Department as a doctor and rapidly acquired a large practice of devoted patients. By degrees he became official physician to the Gendarmerie, to the Prefecture, to the railway companies, and to tho railway companies, and to the local representatives of the Ministries of War and of Pensions. When at last his status was challenged he was unable to produce his diploma. He had acquired it. he said.i at Strasbourg, but it had been mislaid! during the war. Though he was unable to substantiate this story his patients remained true to him and hundreds of them volunteered to testify that he was much the ablest doctor they had known. The Court, however, found Hecker guilty of illegally practising medicine land usurping the title of doctor. He 'was lined to-day £lOO and ordered to pay £5O damages to the Medical Association of the Aisne Department.