MEDICAL PROFESSION AND THE GOVERNMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 9094, 13 July 1915, Page 7

MEDICAL PROFESSION AND THE GOVERNMENT

To the Editor "N.Z. Times.” Sir, —The Hon. James Allen and the Hon. Mr Rhodes have tho impression that the doctors of New Zealand aro trader the . dictatorship of Dr Valintine. Officers of the Health Department have no clinical experience in the diagnosis and treatment of general diseases, and are office' workers, not general medical practitioners. iHowever, Mr Allen gave Dr Valintine a unique and exalted position in Tren—tham camp, and the doctor’s ideas became thereupon inflated. To offer ,to nationalise tho doctors without referring the matter to them was an extraordinary proceeding, - but quite in keeping with what is to be expected under the incapable management of - the Hon. James Allen. The Medical Association represents the medical profession in New Zealand, and doctors have enough intelligence not to he treated like oxen and put under Dr Valintine’s yoke.

The association tried to arrange . a meeting with the Hon. Mr Alien to give him sound advice and help in medical military mattora, but Mir Allen, according to his own statement, did not realise what tho doctors could discuss With him. I believe he thought the Medical Association wished to ..complain to him about the nrioe of butter, the> Bimutaka incline. Thus is confusion worse confounded. —I am, etc.,MEDICO. Jjily 10th, 1915. i