IMPRACTICABLE PLAN, DECLARES DOCTOR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18015, 27 November 1926, Page 1

IMPRACTICABLE PLAN, DECLARES DOCTOR.

COMPULSORY EXAMINATION OF ALL AT 40 BOTH IMPOSSIBLE AND UNNECESSARY, HE SAYS. National Physique Improves. (Special to the “Star”). AUCKLAND, November 27. The suggestion made by a member of the North Canterbury Hospital Board at its last meeting that if all people were medically examined on reaching the age of forty, many troubles and much suffering would be averted, was referred to some leading Auckland practitioners for their views on the proposal that there should be a compulsory medical examination of all persons over forty. The remit to the Hospital Boards’ Conference embodying the proposal does not suggest how it is proposed to enforce the Jaw, nor how to induce a woman who may be fair and fat to admit that she is also forty. One medical practitioner expressed the opinion that the suggestion was both impossible in practice and unnecessary. There was nothing special about the age of forty for either sex. Wise people at any age, on the advent of any deviation from the normal, would consult a doctor. This medical man, who has for twenty-five or more years examined young men in connection with matters of defence, stated his emphatic opinion that the national physique was steadily improving, though the general use of motor-cars did not tend to an improvement of health, and many men and women had too much sedentary office and other work.