The Star. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1926. A DOCTOR FIRES A BROADSIDE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17781, 26 February 1926, Page 6

The Star. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1926. A DOCTOR FIRES A BROADSIDE.

For the first time in its sombre history, the Hospital Boards’ Conference has had to listen to a great deal more than a series of long-drawn resolutions and discursive debates. This week, in Dunedin, the placidity of delegates from all over the Dominion was rudely disturbed by a broadside fi-om an unexpected quarter. Sir Lindo Ferguson, representing the British Medical Association, appeared before a gathering that had invited him to spca'k on the staffing of hospitals. Very quickly, he made his subject almost too lively for his listeners. Hospital boards, he said, appeared to hold the view that the whole benefit of their institutions was bound up in the buildings only: “ Good buildings are certainly necessary, but good nurses are essential; and the medical staff is the whole hospital. If an earthquake razed our hospital buildings to the ground, the next morning we would be able to carry on in tents on the sandhills, providing, of course, that the staff were not wiped out, loo.” How much of all this Sir Lindo Ferguson really meant it is impossible to say. He appears to have allowed himself a little latitude in pursuing the theme that the wishes of the ratepayers weigh too heavily with hospital boards, to the exclusion of such a vastly important matter as recognition of the onerous work of the medical practitioners.

Unfortunately for the purposes of effect, that little picture of hospital staffs tending patients in tents on the sandhills has one or two weaknesses. The doctors and the nurses and the orderlies would not got very far with their day’s work before someone set up a cry for new equipment, someone else a cry for an extra blanket, and a third a cry for heavier lunch-hour rations. To satisfy these demands would take money, and very soon the superintendent of the tented hospital would find himself where he was before the earthquake—putting a levy on the ratepayers. The ratepayers, in this very imperfect world, are a considerable factor in hospital administration. Whether Sir Lindo Ferguson likes it or not, their wishes cannot he ignored; the hospital that tried to ignore them would not last a year. For all that, if the Medical Association has knowledge of abuses in connection with board administration, if it is true “ that experienced surgeons are turned off staffs of hospitals to make room for friends or relatives of members of the board,” then it is doing a public service in attacking those abuses. The only necessity is that the indictment should he framed in more definite terms. Will Sir Lindo Ferguson name the hospitals?

Disordered finance and missing balance-sheets make the aftermath of the “ unofficial ” seamen’s strike a very unpleasant business for the men who organised it. Pointed questions have been asked and are proving hard to answer. This week the Victorian Seamen’s Union held a stop-work meeting to discuss its position. The notorious Jacob -Johansscn quarrelled with his old friend and brother organiser, the notorious Tom Walsh, and allegations about the mishandling of funds flew through the air. Someone even said something of forgery. 'lt is a sinister coincidence that charges of a similar fiature are being made at Home. Last month 250 members of the Seamen’s Wives’ Vigilance Association met in and carried the following resolution: — This meeting of women protests against the manner in which the late unofficial strike committee brought about the strike without making any preparation for the maintenance of the wives, children, and dependents of seamen. We, therefore, resolve to form ourselves into a Vigilance Association to protect our interests. We call for the publication of all strike balance-sheets so that we may know what money has been collected, how’ itjias been disposed of. and we thank the Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union for what they have done. Of course, the missing funds will never turn yp. The seamen and their wives need waste no time in making a search. They will gain most if they lay to heart the outstanding lesson of the recent strike: that agitators who\ shed crocodile tears over “ downtrodden workers,” persuade these same workers to leave steady jobs, and themselves stay on in comfortable, well-paid billets, are not always to be trusted.