A DOCTOR ABROAD.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 8 September 1924, Page 7

A DOCTOR ABROAD.

TRIP TO THE CONTINENT CHICAGO FOR CANCER-MICE. Dr. C. S. Hicks (Dunedin), the holder of a Beit Research Fellowship at Cambridge, has gone to America for part of the vacation. He crossed to New York as medical officer of one of the vessels of the Atlantic Transport Company. Dr. Hicks takes opportunity of meeting men eminent in the medical world, and seeing the big institutions and hospitals. He will visit the Mayo Institute while he is in the United States. But the main purpose of his

trip is to carry out a mission on behalf of Sir William Dunn, of the Cambridge School of Bio-Chemistry. He is going to bring back a strain of special mice that spontaneously develop cancer. The specie is the result of eight years’ work by Miss Maud Sly, of the University of Chicago. During the Easter vacation Dr. Hicks a short time on the Continent, whither he went mainly on behalf of Messrs. C. W. Gregg and Co., of Dunedin, to report on seme special chemicial machinery. While he was making Hamburg his centre, he stayed with a family who had been repatriated from Fiji. He was very much struck with Hamburg, which obviousey was recovering from, the fall of the mark. He visited the university there, and the Barnbeck Krankenhaus—one of the biggest hospitals in Germany, with a capacity of 2800 beds. It was a State institution, the peolpe paying an equivalent of about 10 pf. per week (about sd). and for that they get complete hospital attention, including surgery, when ill. For private wards they pay from £3 to £0 a week, according to the accommodation. if they desire privacy. The , director of the hospital, Dr. Schlappe, made arrangements for Dr. Hicks to i see all that he wished, and thus he met • a number of men of note in the German , medical world.

From Germany he went to Switzerland, and here again he made a point of visiting universities and hospitals, and he had courteous receptions from medical and scientific men. He found the University at Zurich a great delight. It has accommodation for 3500 students, and very prominent men are connected with the medical school. Dr. Hicks met, among others, Professor Hess (physics), Professor Hedinger (pathologist), Dr. Nagler (chemistry, who had been at Oxford, and who has a great love of England). In Switzerland the subject of the absence of iodine

in food, and salts are sold in the shops containing potassiumiodide, as asids to keep down the trouble. In London, too. Dr. Hicks lias met a number of men who are specialising in goitre work. ■ , .