THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1929. WALLACE'S FOLLY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20339, 21 August 1929, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1929. WALLACE'S FOLLY.

He deserves a better memorial, for he has long served the city and district well as chairman of the Hospital Board; but if he persists in overriding public opinion, in his obstinate determination to have an infectious diseases block built where he wishes, Mr. Wallace must expect to have it known, long after lie is deprived of the privileged opportunity of advancing strange arguments for his choice, as "Wallace's Folly." lb cannot very well be known as "The Wallace Wards," for that name is already appropriated elsewhere in the growing congeries of buildings; and it would be a pity to have that merited compliment offset in ridicule. Yet nothing is surer than that it would be. He has no right to complain that he is being wrongly saddled with responsibility for the location. It is but simple truth to say that, were he to abandon his determination, and listen with patience to very reasonable protests, made with quite as much sincerity and earnestness as lie delivers his speeches, he could do much to change the mind of the board. He knows that its members are by no means all with him in the matter. He admits that the board has only "almost definitely" committed itself. His assertion that the honorary medical staff is unanimously behind him has been openly and effectively challenged. He dare not say that the opinion of Auckland medical men as a body, with reference either to the medical or the administrative aspects of the question, supports the location of the block where, in the name of the board, he has authorised it to be placed. His arguments betray a wish that is father to the thought. The time has gone by—this he virtually acknowledges in what he says about a decision of 1925 —for pleading with him, and apparently, with whatever reluctance it may be done, he must be told that obstinacy is not strength but weakness, that it is possible for even good men to sit in the chairs of public bodies 100 long, and that when they reach an age at which it is impossible for them to change their minds they have outlived their usefulness to the community. It is a thousand pities that these things should have to be said, but his unbending demeanour compels their utterance. The arguments advanced by Mr. Wallace, and echoed by some members of the board as if they had no minds of their own, do not bear examination. To say that so much money has been spent on foundations, and therefore the project must be completed, is to take up a position that no mind with any commercial acumen would tolerate for a moment. Why throw good money after bad? It is a matter of common knowledge that, even before 1925. protests were raised against additional buildings being placed in the hospital grounds. Those protests were publicly made. It is unchallengeably true that the founda-tion-work for the proposed infectious diseases block was not begun until years after those protests, and it is certain that subsequent protests have been definite and reasonable. The medical superintendent, reporting on only one point in a written appeal for reconsideration presented to the board, tries to turn attention to the mosquito. His comment, suggesting a campaign against this pest as a carrier, in preference to a campaign -against establishing a centre of possible malarial infection in the city,-is unconvincing in itself as well as foteign to most of the issues at stake. It is no more cogent than to say, '.'Never mind new poppy plantations, but let us have a campaign against steamers, for some of them carry opium," or "Do not trouble about military factories for noxious gases, but let us have a campaign against aircraft, for some of them may bring us destruction." The logic he indulges would lead to public indifference about the placing of an infectious diseases block in preference for a campaign against nurses: as he knows, nurses have been, and Dr. Hilda Northcroft's words to the Hospital Board show that they arc likely to be, carriers of infection. But possibly he would not wish to see his logic carried so far. Reasonable protests cannot be turned aside by any argument, by whomsoever used, as yet put forward in this discussion ; and the sooner the hospital authorities realise this the better for themselves and the community.

In spite of Mr. Wallace's bold front, he has not the support he claims. A medical man on the board—and it must he remembered that Dr. Gunson has qualifications and a knowledge of medical opinion entitling him to a respectful hearing—has challenged Mr. Wallace's claim. Another doctor has headed a deputation of protest. There is an obvious but vague conflict of opinion, and the public—which, by the way, foots the bill and appoints the board —has a right to ask that it shall not be left any longer in doubt as to what is thought about this question, in both its medical and administrative aspects, by expert opinion as represented by the doctors of the district. It is not a question to be settled without recourse to others than the chairman of the board, the medical superintendent, and the honorary medical staff. Bandying indefinite words about what medical opinion favours should give place at once to a local meeting of members of the British Medical Association, a body with unquestionable standing which has not yet stated its views. It has at this juncture a manifest duty to the public, and should do that duty speedily. The lay mind has been impressed by certain facts: the colossal growth of the hospital, coupled with a formless scattering of its units ovdr the grounds; the board's adoption of an unpromising half-measuro of isolation, in an endeavour, which some

experts say is bound to be futile, to prevent cross-infection ; the project of an extravagant expedient—£soo a bed as against £2OO at the new Costlcy Home building—to meet a present emergency and then ere long to become a provision for general hospital purposes; and the consequent certainty that what is now. being done must, in some way, be sooner or later undone. It is high time to be done with "shadowsparring" on the question. Nothing, apparently, can be expected from a majority of the board, led by the chairman, to clear the issue ; and in the light of what transpired at its meeting yesterday, when there was manifest a disposition on their part to take the line of least resistance to the chairman, reasonable people must look elsewhere for a resolving of any doubts they may have. The local members of the B.M.A. can and should take the matter in hand.