SERVICE TO HUMANITY

Southland Times, Issue 25359, 10 August 1935, Page 6

SERVICE TO HUMANITY

RISKS TAKEN BY DOCTORS. Two days after he had conducted a post-mortem examination at Norwood Cottage Hospital, Dr. John J. Douglas, of London, developed symptoms ol blood poisoning. He died two days later. It was then discovered that there was a small punctured wound the size of a pinhead on the doctor’s left wrist. “There is no reasonable doubt that the doctor died from infection contracted while carrying out an autopsy,” said Dr. H. Beecher Jackson, coroner, at the inquest at Croyden. A verdict ot “Death by misadventure” was recorded. A friend said to an interviewer: “The autopsy was on a patient who had died following an operation. Dr. Douglas, who was sixty-nine, did not even suspect he had scratched himself until two days later, when he became feverish.” Sir Ernest Graham Little, the wellknown surgeon, said: “Thre is great danger to a doctor performing an autopsy if he docs not wear gloves. Toxic germs remain active a long time after death, and if the doctor has the slightest scratch on his hands he is risking infection and perhaps death.” Many doctors have given their lives for their work during the past twenty years. Last year Dr. William Murray Taylor, who strove heroically foi months to stem the epidemic of scarlet, enteric and diphtheritic fever in northeast Scotland, contracted diphtheritic fever, while on duty, and died within a week.

Mme. Marie Curie died last year oi an obscure disease contracted while she helped her husband in his pioneer experiments in radium. Another tragic death was that of Di. H. J. B. Fry, cousin of C. B. Fry, the cricketer. Dr. Fry spent his life in cancer research, and died of cancer in 1930, contracted while directly involved in a cancer case. ■