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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9187, 17 October 1888, Page 4

It is hardly possible to conceive anything more unseemly than the struggle of the doctors over the dead Kaiser. We fear it must be attributed to a, feminine conception of the line of duty, for it seems hardly possible that a man of the reputed standing of Sir Morell Mackenzie would not have known from his knowledge of the world, that his opening up a controversy on such a subject would immediately lead to a brawl._ We mean this in no way as a reflection on the gracious sex. They have their inestimable qualities, and in a thousand ways are superior to man. But they have a provoking weakness for fishing in troubled waters, so that it has come to be a by-word, ia the case of trouble, to say at once and without enquiry, that there is a woman at the bottom of it. Our good Queen —may she be forever blessed—is not only the glory of the nation but the honour of her sex ; but she has all the womanly

instinct for putting things rights,, where a man would say leave them alone. We have not the smallest doubt that she and her most estimable daughter the Dowager Empress, are titled with the most generous and touching impulses regarding the late Emperor Frederick, and that it is from a strong sense of duty to his memory, and of indignation against the medical advisers who did not save him from the grasp of death, that they have resolved that the whole story shall be brought to light. Woman—may we be pardoned for saying it—is not judicial in her actions as a ruler. She listens to the impulses of her own tender heart more than she does to the cool promptings of her brain whenever her affections are enlisted other temper roused. In this case these exalted ladies, who no doubt, despite their elevation, are of like passions with ourselves — or, rather, our women-folk — are deeply moved at once by tearful memories of the beloved son and Imsband, who was the most domesticated of princely personages, and by mortification at the unfilial conduct of the reigning Prince, with his royal junketings and pompous international congratulations before the grass had grown over his father's grave ; and being, as it were, left neglected to mourn by themselves, they have resolved that the true story of tlio Emperor's sickness shall be told. It ia not unknown in humbler circles that when someone dearly loved has dice], the doctor is blamed as the cause of it; and a dozen things that were done for the best are garnered up as evidence or negligence or malpractice Apparently, it is similarly nowj and these two mourning ladies, having made up their minds that it was not cancer but malpractice that killed their Pi nee, Dr. Morell Mackenzie, with thai sagacity which rightly or wrongly is by common repute credited to his countrymen, at once agrees with them, and says " Yes, it was Dr. Bergmann." And then cheered no doubt by the sympathy of these sorrowing but exalted ladies, he proceeds to publish a book tilled with twenty ghastly plates of the Emperor's throat in every stage of mangled decay, and shows to a demonstration that this Dr. Bergmann opened the windpipe at the wrong place, and wrongly diagnosed cancer in the lungs, and that a Dr. Gebhardt ruthlessly cauterised the Emperor's throat, adducing the testimony of the deceased Emperor and that of his bereaved widow ; and all to the. effect that Dr. Bergmann, aided by his German colleagues, killed the Prince. To this Dr. Bergmann in brief but expressive language saying that Dr. Mackenzie is a liar, a form of correction which, though usual enough in a different sphere, is not exactly that which we should expect from a Court doctor with his chest covered, with as many decorations as there are scales on a crocodile's. And it is to this stage— which we may regard as the overture to a thrilling dramatic encounter oves the dead and mangled body of the unfortunate Prince —that we are brought by the latest cable message. It is the sorriest spectacle that ever was witnessed in connection with the obsequies of any Prince in modern times, and while people will make allowance for the shattered feelings of the relatives of the deceased monarch, and for a lack or discretion in consequence, there set-ins no excuse for those who have • been directly engaged in getting up such a ghastly quarrel, from which neither benefit nor edification can come to anyone, nor anything but the gratification of profe ssional jealousy.