MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVIII, Issue 12933, 29 September 1902, Page 4

MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS.

The motion to report progress, which was carried in the House of Representatives on Saturday morning by the narrow majority of one vote, will prevent the reappearance of Mr Laurenson’s Medical Practitioners Bill during the present session. We hope, however, that the member for Lyttelton will re-introduce it in good time next year. The object of the Bill' is to remedy an obvious defect in the Medical Practitioners Act of 1869—a measure, by the way, winch might very well be revised in other directions—and we 1 or© surprised that it should have met with any opposition at all. The original Act provides that any medical man convicted of any felony or misdemeanour “ in Great Britain or Ireland, or an any of the British dominions” shall have his name erased from the Register, and shall lose all the rights and privileges h© obtained by registration. This of course, a very proper provision. It is of the very greatest importance to the whole community that no one who has shown himself unworthy of the high traditions of the medical profession should be allowed to- remain in its ranks. But the Legislature, when passing the Act of 1869, appears to have lost sight of the possibility ol a man who has brought himselfwithin the operation of the law, jitter wards purging his offence-by long years of faithful work and exemplary living. It made no provision for restoring his name to till© Register. An impulsive man might, under some strong commit an assault, for in-

stance, and after suffering the 'ordinary punishment for his indiscretion might find iris registration cancelled and dais occupation gone, not for a week or a month or a year, hut for ever. The offence might be ai comparatively trivial' one, one that the public would be ready enough to excuse, or even to applaud ; but the Registrar would have no option in the matter. His duty would 1 be to remove the offender’s name from the Register, without giving any weight to the surrounding circumstances, and once the name was removed it could never he restored. Mr Laurenson’s Bill simply pro 1 - poscs that medical men should' be placed in the same position in this respect as lawyers, who, when their names are struck off the rolls, may apply to a Supreme Court Judge to have them reinstated. It would surely be sale enough to concede as much as this. A Supreme Court Judge could'be trusted to look after the interests of the public, and to err, if he erred at all, on the side of severity rather than on the side of leniency. In any case the law should not be left in such, a condition that an aggrieved person can make no appeal from its rough and ready decisions.