REMEDYING DEFECTS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20602, 1 November 1941, Page 6

REMEDYING DEFECTS

PARTIALLY UNFIT MAN TREATMENT REFUSED MAN SENT TO GAOL (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. The regulations prescribing treatment for the partially-unfit man are vague and uncertain, said Mr. J. Hogben before Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., in defending John Herbert Torkington on a charge of failing to submit to remedial treatment. The charge was denied. Lieutenant-Colonel Hardie Neil, regional deputy, said that so far as he knew the injection treatment for varicose veins which the defendant refused to undergo had not proved ineffective. At the Auckland Hospital it was a standardised treatment and administered by three senior men. He had never noticed a recurrence of the trouble after injections. Mr. Hogben: A few fatal cases have been reported, have they not? The witness: Yes, but when the vein is tied at the trunk there is no possible chance of that. Mr. Hogben said the definition of the word “treatment” had been under discussion by the Defence Department and himself since May. He submitted that the world as used in the regulations did not include anything save medical treatment in the narrower sense Magistrate’s Comment The magistrate said that medical practitioner was a very comprehensive term. In New Zealand, 59 per cent of the men sent for .treatment required , surgery, 'however ' slight, father than medicine.

Mr. Y. R. Meredith, appearing on behalf of the Dirqctdr of National Service, said that 130 men had been treated by injection at the Auckland Hospital since March and all had responded satisfactorily. Mr. Hogben questioned whether the regulations were wide enough to include surgical treatment. While recognising the necessity, he submitted that under a wider interpretation the regulations to some extent restrained the liberty of the subject. The magistrate: The liberty of the subject, when we are fighting for our liberty! What an extraordinary remark to make. The regulations are clear and unequivocal. There is an absplute duty on the reservist when called upon to present himself for /treatment. That includes 'any surgical or medical treatpgnt deemed to be necessary to fit him for service. In all my experience, I have never sat upon a case of such painful unreality. I can see no substantial basis in tji.e argument, and I am surprised at the military authorities taking the matter so seriously as to regard the prosecution as a test case.

The defendant was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment.