CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1924, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

MODERN QUACKERY. (To the Editor. Sir,—Tn Saturday’s issue of the Daily News there is an article taken from the | Auckland Herald on quackery. That I quaokery exists all over the world is well known. Everything worth while has its name stolen and traded upon for money by cheats and frauds; that ks inevitable. It says: “Men untrained in medicine have been purchasing their MJ). degrei*s; also untrained men trade on a D.C. degree (Doctor of Chiropractic)'.”Both the genuine M.D. and genuine highly-trained D.C. are powerless to prevent su.-h thingH happening. Dr. Palmer, president of the Palmer School of Chiropractic, U.S.A., has been instrumental in bringing to light and exposing many of these fake diploma mills. The writer of the article says: “In ab sincerity in increasing body of public opinion scoffs at the highly trained physician.” Had the highly trained physician got his patients well people would never have turned to other forms of healing; there would have been no need. There are drugless forms of healing that are doing good work, of course, leaving out the usual forms of quackery. Quark is defined in Gould’s medical dictionary as; "A pretender of medical skii'l, as charlatan.” As a matter o. fact, the xtract of Mr. sTan5 T an de 5V aters, in the Ladies’ Home Journal, from which the present article is written, does not mention New Zealand or its health methods; he -writes of America, whose population is so vast that hundreds of quacks can easily be lost there. The reference to New Zealand has dearly been written by a New Zealand M.D., presumably an Auckland doctor, in the hope of discouraging anything non-medical. New Zealand, fortunately, lias comparatively few quacks, and these do lot last long anywhere her?. In the first part of the article we are given to understand that though there are medical dipluma mills it does not affect the gib nine M.D. The writer fails at the’ same ttoie to give us to understand that, though there are also fake . chiropractors “pounding on the spine,” there are also t'he genuine fully qualified ?hiropractors doing splendid humanitarian work. In conclusion the writer says: best safeguard against quicks and fake doctors is to be as particular about the training and reputation of one’s physician as a business man is in appointing a cashier for his firm.” The genuine chiropractors have always recognised this principle, and have at all times published the name of the scljobl from which they have graduated, thus guarding against fraud. —I am, etc., MYRTLE FLETCHER. New Plymouth, Sept. 1, 1924.