OTAGO MEDICAL SCHOOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23203, 29 May 1937, Page 18

OTAGO MEDICAL SCHOOL

BODY RECEIVED FROM WELLINGTON AN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION (Per United Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 28. Following the death in the Wellington Public Hospital on December 21, 1936, of a male person, and complaints that the body had been sent to the Otago Medical School, Dunedin, without the relatives or friends of the deceased being advised, the chairman (Mr J. Glover) submitted a special report to a meeting of the Wellington Hospital Board, which was received without comment. The report read as follows: —"The deceased was removed to Dunedin for anatomical examination. He had no relatives in New Zealand, and had no friends, so far as the hospital officers then knew. By section 31 of the Medical Act, 1908, provision is made for the examination of such bodies. It was only after the body had been removed to Dunedin that a friend called, and it was at once arranged that the body should be returned and buried in a plot at Karori Cemetery which the deceased had bought. The friend, though notified, did not attend the funeral. " Mr A. W. Croskery was invited to attend upon the committee set up to deal with his complaint against the hospital officers. He was also invited to state if the date of the proposed meeting was suitable to him. Mr Croskery replied that he would not attend, as he had other business, and he made no suggestion that he desired to attend on another date. The committee examined the facts relevant to the whole matter, and finds that there was nothing irregular or improper in the procedure taken. The deceased's friend, though invited to attend the committee meeting, failed to do so. " The funeral charges were not excessive in the opinion of the committee, and were duly authorised by the deceased's trustee, who, in fact, arranged for the funeral. It may also be mentioned that the statement that the hospital has made a habit of sending bodies to Dunedin for examination can best be answered by the fact that an average of not more than one body in a year has been sent in recent years."