DUNDAS MACKENZIE CASE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 102, 31 March 1925, Page 5

DUNDAS MACKENZIE CASE.

NHIE TO BE REMOVED FROM REGISTER. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, March 30. Mr Justice Herdman, in delivering judgment in the cm in which application was made to have the name of Dr. Dundas removed from the medical register of New Zealand, said Dr. MacKenzie was not charged with professional misconduct because he practised the Abrams system of diagnosis and treatment. His conduct was up for review because it was alleged he practised it in a particular manner. The charge was that he practised it without any honest belief in its reliability or utility. In other words, the medical board submitted that the evidence it had placed before the Court proved that a medical practitioner, whose practice was large and highly remunerative, had adopted and used as part of his professional methods a system in which he had no honest belief and that, accordingly, he deceived persons who sought his professional assistance and took from them fees for services which he could not have believed wore of any value. His Honour' said ho believed Dr. William Pettit (a witness for Dr. MacKenzie) to bo a perfectly sincere believer in the Abrams system. He relied upon his medical training and practice, and depended for his diagnosis upon information gained in the course of a clinical examination in conjunction with the Abrams blood test. “This is not, the story told of Dr. MacKenzie by some of the witnesses called to support the moticn. The weakness of Dr. Pettit’s evidence is his refusal to submit the system to a test. If the system is sound, a fair test would not destroy its worth.” The judge said he could only conclude that those who refused to submit to a trial had no confidence in the system. “If there exists this lack of confidence, then it gioes a long way to prove that Dr. MacKenzie, in his own rnind, must have doubted the soundness of the system.” The facts were reviewed and the judge drew the inference that Dr. MacKenzie had no honest belief in the usefulness and reliability of the system that he practised. If a practitioner, in the practice of his profession, adopted and used a system in which he hud no belief, then he accepted reward for services which he must believe to be of no value. If he led tlie public to believe that the system in which ho had no faith could detect disease and could be used to check or cure disease, then he was not acting honestly and in good faith and brought himself within the words of the Statute and was guilty of “infamous conduct in a professional respect.” It is not enough for him to say he believed in the system. That bare statement “standing alone would not justify him when the facts were against him, when those upon whom the onus rested had shown that his acts and conduct had set at defiance the principles of professional honour and credit. In these proceedings, that onus had been discharged, and the judge found himself obliged to come to the conclusion that the charga against Dr. MacKenzie was proved, and accordingly he ordered his name to be removed frpm the register and fixed a period of two years as the time after which Dr. MacKenzie might apply for reregistration. The question of the costs of the action was reserved. Counsel for Dr. MacKenzie informed the press of his intention to appeal to the Qourt of Appeal within three months.