REFUSAL TO HAVE TREATMENT

Southland Times, Issue 24650, 23 January 1942, Page 3

REFUSAL TO HAVE TREATMENT

RESERVIST SENTENCED TO DEFAULTERS’ CAMP

Maxwell Joseph Butel, aged 29, a motion picture proprietor of Mataura, was sentenced to defaulters detention by Mr R. C. Abernethy, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday for refusing to report for treatment deemed necessary to make him fit for service

with the armed forces. The hearing was resumed from Wednesday, when the evidence of several Invercargill doctors was heard. The doctors had all examined Butel and found him suffering from varicocele. An operation had been recommended, but Butel refused to submit himself for treatment. On Wednesday he stated that when he reported at the Southland Hospital he was asked to sign a form absolving the authorities of responsibility of blood poisoning or disease while undergoing the operation. In evidence yesterday Dr L. it. Stewart, acting medical superintendent at the Southland Hospital, said there was a form which all patients, military or otherwise, had to sign when undergoing an operation. The form was exhibited. The Magistrate said that the form was not so important as he was led to believe by Butel. A patient could contract a disease after the operation had been successfully completed. In giving his verdict the Magistrate said that an officer had called on Butel to submit himself for treatment after he had been examined twice. All the doctors who had examined him had recommended an operation. The man was called upon in the correct way to undergo treatment and he refused. Therefore the Court was bound to punish him. After the hearing Senior-Sergeant W. T. Kelly said that for the information of the Court and the public generally the statement made by Butel that a young man at Gore had recently died as the result of a similar operation was incorrect. The man at Gore had died after treatment for varicose veins.