Cook Hospital.

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 13789, 18 January 1918, Page 3

Cook Hospital.

ROYAL COMMISSION OF ENQUIRY.

[Per Press Association.] GISBORNE, Jan. Hi

The Royal Commission, of Enquiry into affairs at Cook Hospital has concluded the preliminaries and commenced the taking of evidence to-day. Mr H. W. Bishop is tho commissioner, and there are seven solocitors engaged on behalf of various parties, including Mr M. Myers, of Wellington, who appears on behalf of the petitioners for the enquiry. Dr Scott, a local practitioner, is watching the proceedings on his own behalf and on behalf of Nurse Higgins. In the course of the evidence, j. €. Field, chairman of the petitioners’ committee, submitted a recommendation that the Government should pass legislation prohibiting medical men in practice holding scats on a Hospital Board, the petitioners stating that their experience was that such conditions led to unrest.

The commissioner said that if circumstances warranted it he would make such a recommendation to his Excellency the Governor-General. Howard Kenway, ex-chairman of the Hospital Board, gave evidence covering affairs at the hospital during the past ten years. Dr Wilson, in the course of his evidence, expressed the opinion that it was not in the best interests of a hospital that medical men interested in private hospitals should be members of the Hospital Board. Witness also made allegations respecting the treatment of a couple of cases which he had sent to tho hospital. The enquiry tvas adjourned till tomorrow. The proceedings promise to be lengthy and tedious, and as yet no specific charges have been made, the evidence so fan being mainly a lengthy history of hospital affairs.