COLLEGE OF SURGEONS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17132, 7 September 1926, Page 2

COLLEGE OF SURGEONS

FOR AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND

IMPORTANT STEPS BEING TAKEN

Australia and New Zealand are to have a College of Surgeon's, which will appoint Fellows to advance the study of the science and art of surgery, provide libraries, museums, laboratories, and journals, and elevate ihe practice of surgery. A convention of prominent medical men, among them Dr. Herbert, of New Zealand, has lately been sitting in Sydney to arrange the preliminary details of the scheme, so that the Australasian Medical Congress may be able formally to inaugurate the college when it meets in Dunedin next year.

The proposal, which has been discussed widely in the Commonwealth and the Dominion during the last 38 months, gaining the support of most of the prominent practitioners, was first, outlined by Dr. Barnett, Professor of Surgery at the University of Otago, when the Medical Congress sat in Brisbane six years ngo. Since it has boon taken up by the medical men in Victoria. Among them is Sir George Syme, who will probably be the first president. The general opinion seems to he, soys a correspondent of the Herald, that the institution should build on a framework of all that is best in the three royal colleges of London, Edinburgh, and Ireland, and Ihe features that give a solid practical advantage to the American system, which embraces Canada, the United States, and South America. The new college will, of course, have to handle immediately many intricate problems, among them no doubt the omnipresent difficulties of giving a surgical service tx> the. scattered populations of Australia ami New Zealand, and of keeping more closely in touch with modern medical thought in Britain and America. In its first sitting of four hours the convention chose from 120 volunteers -10 men who will be asked to found the college. They are all prominent practitioners in New Zealand or Australia.