SITUATION AT WHANGAREI.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15855, 29 August 1913, Page 5

SITUATION AT WHANGAREI.

LAMENTABLE NEGLECT. NEWSPAPER FOLLY. A DOCTOR'S STRICTURES. Dr Ventry Smith, of Whangarei, who was the first to pronounce the disease to bo smallpox, stated in Auckland last Saturday to a newspaper representative that there were about a thousand cases in the north. He did not think there was any chance of stamping out the epidemic before Christmas, and said there would probably be sporadic cases quite as late as that. He had had a pood deal of experience of smallpox, first in Dublin, then in Japan, and afterwards in the south of France. "I cannot understand why the newspapers continue to call smallpox by such a misleading term as 'the epidemic,' f ' lie 'said. "Medical practitioners in New Zealand will get the credit of not being able to diagnose the disease or give it a name. Of all the cases I have seen of 'the epidemic' there is hardly 5 per cent, of them chickenpox." 'When the cases at Point Chevalier were mentioned, Dr Smith said:—"Last Sunday (17th instant) I was shown all over the hospital, and I am quite satisfied that the disease is identical with the smallpox in Whangarei, only that tha worst case at Point Chevalier is not nearly so bad as I have seen it in the North." The doctor, in recalling the warning he gave, said: "All I can say is that it is most lamentable that it was allowed to run riot after I gave notice of its presence. It would have been thoroughly stamped out by this if my advice had been acted upon, but now, I venture to state, we will not be thoroughly clear of it this side of Christmas," °

PATIENTS DISAPPEAR. ALARMING CIRCUMSTANCE. SCATTERED EVERYWHERE. (Peh United Press Association.) < WHANGAREI, August 28. Dr East visited Whananaki yesterday, where he had previously attended 40 patients suffering from smallpox. He was greatly shocked to find that nearly half of the sufferers had disappered from the settlement, and had gone across the Opuawhanga River to Wairaki. The doctor views the circumstances with alarm, as they are still infectious cases. They'had received definite instructions not to leave the settlement. The doctor thinks the suffereis are scattered all over the country.