CHAIR OF OBSTETRICS

Southland Times, Issue 22158, 28 October 1933, Page 5

CHAIR OF OBSTETRICS

STATEMENT BY DR. GORDON. NEED FOR HOSPITAL. (Per United Press Association.) Stratford, October 27. In commenting on the discussion when the deputation of Otago members waited on the Ministers of Finance and Health with reference to the obstetrical . .ospital, Dr. Doris Gordon said that the statement credited to the Minister of Health, that the request for the hospital was a comparatively recent development arising since the establishment of the chair of obstetrics, was not correct nor indicative o'f Mr Young’s interest in the welfare of women and children. The chair of obstetrics, said Dr. Gordon, was established on May 1, 1930, when women handed over a cheque of £25,000, but as far back as September, 1928, Mr Young received the Obstetrical Society executive and discussed in an informal way the possibility of securing the hospital. Although unable to offer any financial promises, the Minister had given helpful advice and was keenly interested in the possibility of enlisting the help of women to finance either the construction of the hospital or the endowment of a professorial chair. The first official request to Parliament for this hospital was made in February, 1929, by a deputation appointed at a gathering of over 100 New Zealand graduates of medicine to convey to the Minister of Health the pressing need that this hospital should be made up-to-date and brought into line with similar institutions overseas. These graduates came from all over the Dominion and represented every branch of medical art, and the majorit. of them had no immediate interest in the practice of obstetrics. Yet they were unanimous in their request that the one blot on the New Zealand Medical School, the primitive obstetrical teaching facilities, should immediately be remedied. This deputation was sympathetically received by the Minister of Health at that date, the Hon. A. J. Stallworthy, and in August, 1929, it was announced the Government had sanctioned a grant for the hospital. . “It was only after Cabinet made this decision,” said Dr. Gordon, “that the Obstetrical Society shaped the endowment appeal which culminated in the endowment of the obstetrical chair.”