The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, JUDY 12, 1915. THE MEDICAL OFFER

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 9093, 12 July 1915, Page 6

The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, JUDY 12, 1915. THE MEDICAL OFFER

Once one wondered long at the paucity of doctors in attendance on tho military. Ono has all the time been invited by suggestion to blame the medical profession. Tho suggestion has been in tho air that while all classes and ranks wore pressing eagerly forward with offers of service, of help, of something advantageous in any way to tho common cause of patriotism, of Empire, of freedom, the medical profession stood aloof, heedless, callous, sulky. How else account for those long lines of sick men. waiting wet in the wind and rain to be examined by expert attention, and regarded as malingerers until some one of the two or three overworked medical officers had time to give them a hurried glance? But it turns out, happily for the profession of medicine in our midst, that the doctors have been burning to help all tho time, anxious to give organised service, terribly disappointed at being ignored. This has been made clear by the secretary of the British Medical Association in New Zealand. Not. only that, hut Dr Gibbs, in his letter published in our issue of Saturday, after ’ testifying to the above, went on to report, for the public information, that the association, unable to rest in tho face of the things happening and the signs of worse trouble, made a specific offer to provide “a sufficient medical staff for supervising and treating the sick soldiers in Wellington and at Berhampore and Kaiwarra, and other temporary hospitals.” That was one of the points to be discussed at a conference for which tho association asked. At that time the increasing number of the sick and their dreadful surroundings were notorious, and the famous interview with Dr Thacker published in our columns threw a good deal of light on the points within the period named. But the offer of the association met with only delayed verbal response. To this day nothing has been done about the bona fide, humanitarian, patriotic, most timely offer of the highest medical authority in our midst. This is cold, contemptuous, unmannerly treatment ! Such is Mr Allen’s reply to the off er of a qualified help in abundance for men in danger of disease, disability, and death. There is no cause for wonder. What happened to the general body of the profession who offered medical service, valuable with or without speo.al knowledge of military hygiene, had already happened to memoers of tho profession who, being familiar with military hygiene, had ottered their services, advice, and special information. The doctors who offered prevention were practically ignored, like tho doctors who offered cure. The treatment was less scurvy in their case. Their offers were recognised by correspondence, but —and that is the main point—they were also shelved. If a number of navvies, coal-heavers, lawyers, accountants, crossing-sweepers, sailors had made these offers, that came from the civil and military branches of the medical profession, they could not have been ignored more completely. It was the “I,” the great “Efeo,” the Minister of the heart of triple brass—Edu-. cation, Finance, Defence —who knew better, required no prompting, ’ no help, no suggestion. Ho had seized the three most important portfolios for himself, when his party attained power. Imagination fails to realise how the colleagues of tho Cabinet came to acquiesce in this seizure of power, unless on the understanding that it was but temporary. But imagination does not fail to realise how, long after any possible temporary limit was passed, as the colleagues were wondering when the understood adjustment was going to be made, the blast of war came shattering through the shuddering Cabinet rooms. Imagination easily conjures up tbe picture of a circle of pale figures hinting that the triple brass of three portfolios was too much for any one man. Imagination ought to find it impossible to add the picture of a trebly-loaded Minister refusing to unload, for the sake of patriotism, some of the triple weight, declaring with morose jauntiness that it was very comfortable to carry that triple weight of the best portfolios, including Defence, with the vast burden of war .added. What imagination has to realise is that the great “Ego” carried the triple weight through tho recess, war included, in defiance of Cabinet and common-sense and ordinary prudence. The man who had ignored all the doctors, civil and military, staggered gloomily on under the triple burden to the detriment of the public interest. ■ Nor is this all. We will not refer to the terrible light thrown on his methods by the sudden shifting of the Trentham camp with its suggestion of the last naval command “All hands overboard!” That concerns the past. The futUro_ is more important. Now the future is darkened .by the arrangement made by the great Ego, who is above all doctors and experts, and can run three great departments of State without any previous experience ana with tho added weight on one of them of the greatest war of the world’s entire history. It is the arrangement by which Dr Yalintine is placed at the head of tho military hygiene of the Dominion, The doctor is able, keen, industrious, upright, everything that a leading member of the most noble and arduous of professions should be. But of military hygiene he has, so far as we know, no inxling. He has never been asked to study it, he has had no experience of it. Lord Kitchener has said that no one should be in charge in war medically without knowledge and practice of military hygiene. To that cud every doctor attached to the military service has to undergo a course el

training before ho goes to the front. Yet hero the great Defence Minister who knows better than anybody else, including Lord Kitchener, places a doctor at the head of the whole militarj department who knows not, so far as his published qualifications are concerned, the A.B.C. of military hygiene. The reason given is that he is the head of the Health Department. But tN> fact is that under the same direction the camp failure that is now being shovelled out of the way, may be followed by other camp failures which will have in their turn to bo shovelled away. The Government caucus did not go 'far enough the other day when it forced Education and Finance out of tho inept hands of the great Ego. It ought to have added Defence to that righteous wrench. If it reflect® it will do so .before other camps havo to ho broken up in a hurry.