DOCTOR IN BOX

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27390, 16 May 1950, Page 6

DOCTOR IN BOX

Answer To Serious Charges POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION DESCRIBED PA HAMILTON, May 15. The fourth day of the Supreme Court case before Mr Justice Callan, in which the Medical Council is seeking to have the name of Dr Francis Clough Blundell, of Te Awamutu, struck from the medical roll, was opened this morning. Mr J. F. Strang and Mr K. L. Sandford are representing the Medical Council, and Mr A. K. North, K.C., with him Mr M. S. Johnson, are appearing for Dr Blundell. Eric Roy Peterspn, of the State Hydro-electric Department, in evidence, said that at 11 p.m. on the night of July 20, 1949, at the request of Dr Blundell, a switch to supply power to the Puahue area was left on when all other areas were cut off. . Dr Blundell, in the witness box, confirmed his evidence given at the inquest subject to two reservations. The first was in respect to the death certificate, and the second, he said, concerned a typing error. He said he had been in practice in Te Awamutu for 30 years, and his practice was a large one in partnership with Dr Calvert. His district included Ohaupo, Kaipaki, Monovale, and he used to go far as Kawhia. It was nothing unusual for a patient to come from Rukuhia, which was only six miles from Hamilton. He worked on a fee-for-service system under social security. , . . . Dr Blundell continued that, at his first interview with Mrs Jenkins, he had the feeling that the foetus was dead from his examination and from the fact that Mrs Jenkins had not felt any movements. He could not state as a medical opinion that the foetus was dead, but he felt it was, and the patient should have definitely felt movement by four months and a-nalf, particularly as she had had six children. The effect of strain on a woman in Mrs Jenkins’s condition would be graver than in the case of a woman in normal pregnancy. Cross-examination of the defendant by Mr Strang occupied the whole of the afternoon session. Dr Blundell said to Mr Strang that on July 13 it did not occur to him that Mrs Jenkins might be aborted by undue exertion. On July 20 he did not ask her if anything had happened in the meantime. Witness said that on July 20 he told Mrs Jenkins she was going to have a miscarriage. Mrs Taylor’s home was one to which convalescent patients of his had frequently been sent. There had beep no occasion to send to Mrs Taylor s home before a miscarriage took place, nor other women having an inevitable miscarriage. , , , Witness said he had no doubt regarding the cause of death. It was postpartem haemorrhage. He did not know what caused it and decided to open up the body. It was such an unusual happening that he felt that for his own satisfaction and for that of Mr Jenkins he would find what caused the haemorrhage. On opening up the body he found the cause of the haemorrhage was a small piece of placenta still attached inside. Asked whether it was not the usual course to place organs removed in a solution, witness said it was not necessarily so at that stage. Witness said he told Sister Macrae to keep the organs. Sister Macrae did not acknowledge his instruction. He thought she had heard him. Witness said that in the post-mortem examination he had in mind the possibility of interference. _lf there had been interference it might have left marks which would have been seen. He did not see any such marks. His removal of the organs would not make it impossible to tell if there had been interference or not. Noel Leonard Flyger, a carrier, of Hamilton, said that on July 15 he delivered three and a-half tons of manure to the Jenkins farm. The manure was in bags 12 to the ton. This was two days after Mrs Jenkins first went to Te Awamutu. Mrs Jenkins helped to unload the manure. It was not the type of work he had ever seen a woman doing before.