MEDICAL PROFESSION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 304, 23 November 1937, Page 7

MEDICAL PROFESSION.

FREE CRITICISM BY MEMBER. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Nov. 22. Some of the freest criticism of the medical profession by one of its own members that has been heard in Auckland for some time was uttered by Dr. F. J. Gwynne, radiologist, in an address at the Auckland Rotary Club’s luncheon. Dr. Gwynne, whose remarks were sprinkled with a good deal of humour, particularly attacked medical education and doctors’ hostility to the medical efforts of outsiders. “The medical profession is. changing in its attitude to its patients and to the community,” he said, “but in the transition it is difficult to keep adjustment abreast of the change. The doctor should be the product of a perfect civilisation and he needs your help.” . • Stating that he would try to indicate why the system and not individual doctors deserved criticism, Dr. Gwynne explained that he did not wish to pose as a reformer. After spending six years in a medical school and the expenditure of at least £ISOO, a y’oung doctor had not enough confidence to start in practice himself . and usually embarked on a four or five years’ post-graduate course. At the end of that he was about 30 years old, with half his life gone and still he was without practical experience. _ Dr. Gwynne severely criticised the compulsory lectures by the far too numerous and narrow specialists who “raised tediousness to an exact science” and reliance on textbooks with no studv of the works of great physicians. ‘Specialisation, he said, tended to overcrowd ami overload the curriculum. Those who were responsible forgot that medicine was an art and that no amount of teaching would make it a science. Examinations were often iiistlv suspected of being competitive to et o'nlv a certain number through each ■pear They seemed designed to find out wliat the student did not know rather than what lie did, and the candidate who was the best echo and imitator 0 f his teacher tended to do best. “What is the result? asked the sneaker “A diploma bearing signatures, to the illegibility of which is added a liver of Arteriosclerosis, a few technical tricks which we tan teach to our secretaries in a few weeks so that thev can do our work, and the loss of th! critical faculty after a long period nf absorbing uncorrelated material so that it remains uncorrelated for many ye “Tn medicine responsibility should R P undertaken at a much earlier nee. All through historv the accent lias been mi youth. Hertz. Rutherford, Davv Galileo, Faraday, and many more had made great discoveries before the age of 30.’