COMPLAINT AGAINST D0CT0RS

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14068, 15 February 1939, Page 5

COMPLAINT AGAINST DOCTORS

QUESTIONS TO CORONER TWO DOCTORS REFUSED TO COME IN CASE OF LIFE AND DEATH. Jllectric Telegraph—Press Association WELLINGTON, Last, Night. When the inquest on his daughter, Beverley 7 Irene, aged two years eight months, concluded in Lower Hutt to-day, Byron Thomas Allison, Public Works labourer, 25 Norton Park Avenue, asked the district coroner, Mr E. Gilbertson, if, in a case of life and death, when a doctor was in his surgery when called, was he not supposed to come ? Two doctors, he added, were in their surgeries and refused to come.

The coroner : There may have been some reason. There is no legal compulsion on a doctor to come, but it is the practice in their profession that they do. Returning a verdict of accidental drowning in the Waiwhetu Stream, Lower Hutt, on February 10, the coroner said that it was one of those cases where a knowledge of resuscitation was important. In England, at such places as the Serpentine, there were notices posted instructing people in the methods of resuscitation. What the grandmother of the child did was apparently right, but he thought that if effective means had been used in time she would have recovered. Dr. R. A. Bakewell, Petone, said that when he was called to the house of child’s grandmother at between 2 p.m. and 2.15 p.m. on Friday the child was then, in his opinion, dead. Death was due to drowning. He carried out artificial respiration for 45 minutes, but there was no sign of life. The child had vomits ed after being taken out of the stream.

The coroner : If proper 4 methods had been employed at once would the child have lived?—There was every chance that, she would. Mrs Irene Allison, 40 Rossiter Averue, Lower Hutt, grandmother of the child, said that lier daughter-in-law and grandchild visited her on Friday. After lunch the child played round the house and in the yard. Her daughter-in-law brought her in 6nce, but later she went outside again. At 2 p.m. they looked for her. and she saw her shoes on the bank of the stream at the back of her property. The child was face downward and motionless in the water. She got her out on to the bank and she started to vomit. With a neighbour she work hard to bring the child back to life, but was unsuccessful.

My daughter-in-law tried for some time to get a doctor, and finally got Dr. Bakewell. . . The child had been half an hour out of the water when he arrived," said Mrs Alii son.

To the coroner, Mrs Allison said she had had no experience of resuscitation, but did all she could think of. She laid the child face down, pressed lier back and worked her arms as well as pulling her tongue. The coroner: That child was alive if it vomited.—That' was what I thought. Had two other doctors come at once she would have lived. Sergeant J. W. McHolm conducted the inquest.