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Hokitika Guardian, 28 August 1933, Page 4

“At every hand,” said Sir Holburt Waring, president of the Royal College og Surgeons, when opening the Buckston Brown Surgical Research Farm, “we have need of greater knowledge of the working of the Body. For years after the Great War, for example, we thought that physiologists, lied provided the kev to the cause and treatment of •operational shock. It has been proved that the explanations . given were not wholly, correct, and we now want to know.,whether such shock is a nervous effect or whether it, is caused by chemical changes originating in

the damaged tissues... If tlvat knowledge were available—and there is no reason why, with-sustained effort, it should not be obtained—we should be able to take measures to reduce operational shock very appreciably and so to remove one of the'greatest objections of the surgical method.” In the case of brain operations, Sir Holburt proceeded, more exact information .was needed as to the role played by different parts of the brain, and. as to the effects on personality and health of interfering locally with the blood supply—,a.s when a tumour is removed. “Another very large field of progress,” lie continued, “is being opened up by increasing knowledge of the work of our nerves. An example of bow such knowledge may be quickly applicable is the prospect of relieving certain forms of facial paralysis which has resulted from the discovery by Sir Charles Ballance- in the college laboratories that the ‘sympathetic’ (or unconscious) nervous system can be made to do the work of the ‘motor’ (or conscious )system, from which it had been thought- to be entirely disconnected.” Other -pressing problems were represented bv cases of intestinal obstruction, in which there was a largely unexplained mortality of 40 per cent; and ulcers of the stomach and duodenum, cases of which had quadrupled in one Ur ere hospital within 10- or 12 years, although they still had no satisfactory explanations either of their cause or of why some perforated and some did not.