HIGH LEVEL REACHED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23463, 30 March 1938, Page 4

HIGH LEVEL REACHED

SURGERY IN AUSTRALIA SIR LOUIS BARNETT IMPRESSED (Special to Daily Times) Wellington, Mar, 29. " Surgery in Otago had reached a very high level, and visiting doctors from New Zealand would receive as useful an insight into the progress of surgerey by going to Australia as they would from a trip to Europe, said Sir Louis Barnett, the well-known Dunedin surgeon, who returned by the Awatea to-day from Sydney, having attended the eleventh annual general meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Sir Louis Barnett is president of the college, which numbers 617 Fellows. New Zealand is third on the membership list \yith 126 Fellows. The conference was well' organised, said Sir Louis. Two. items of special interest were provided by two visitors from America—Dr George Swift, of Seattle, the noted specialist in brain surgery, and Dr Updegraff, of Hollywood, a specialist in the repair of deformity and disfigurements. Dr Updegraff showed a coloured kinematographic film dealing with his work. The film was a remarkable production. Other matters discussed by the conference dealt with post-graduate teaching and the establishment of special hospitals for that purpose. Melbourne and Sydney already had large institutions for the purpose of providing courses of instruction for physicians, as well as for surgeons, in the modem development of medical work. The college surgeons were taking a prominent part in this work because it was felt that to give the public an efficient surgical service the practitioners had to be kept up to date with all recent developments of proved value in the treatment of disease and injuries. The college had recently received a bequest of £75,000 from the estate of one of the foundation Fellows, the late Mr Gordon Craig, a distinguished Sydney surgeon, and with, this money scholarships were to be provided to enable worthy applicants to benefit by the facilities provided for postgraduate education. New Zealand would share in the advantages of the plan. Further, with the Gordon Craig endowment, the library of the College of Surgeons at Melbourne would be made available to practitioners in all parts of Australia by the circulation of books and by the distribution of photostats where the necessary articles written in a foreign language would be translated into English. The service was to be provided free of charge to all Fellows. The college realised, Sir Louis said, that to provide an adequate and efficient surgical service the main hospitals in all parts of the Dominion had to be of a high grade with regard to staging and equipment generally. In Australia the rule was that the college should be represented on the advisory boards of the main hospitals and New Zealand was now gradually falling into line with the Australian practice. The president of the college is elected for a two-year period, and this is Sir Louis Barnett’s second year. The next president, he said, would probably be Sir Hugh Devine, of Melbourne. Sir Hugh was at present en route to England, and while there he would make representations with a view to obtaining • royal charter for the college.