HEALTH DEPARTMENT TO CONDUCT RESEARCH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18468, 21 May 1928, Page 1

HEALTH DEPARTMENT TO CONDUCT RESEARCH.

(Special to the “ Star.”) WELLINGTON, May 21. Medical research carried out in New Zealand, the work of the Health Department in this direction and the investigations it is hoped to make in the future, were reviewed by Dr Watt, Deputy-Director-General of Health, at the quarterly meeting of the Board of Health. The Department, he said, proposed to continue its inquiries into the incidence of goitre and rheumatoid arthritis, and to commence an inquiry into the causes of stillbirths and firstmonth mortality of infants. “There is a tendency,” said Wr Watt, “to suggest that New Zealand can do little in the way of research until a large equipped

research institute has been built, and until workers have been appointed who can devote themselves to research untrammelled by the demands of other work. This is a mistaken idea. Many of the most important additions to medical science have been made by general practitioners, very often working alone and without elaborate equipment. ” / * It had been well said that research was no prerogative of the laboratory or side room, or experimental ward, and that it depended on the attitude of mind which might or might not be found in these places, but which must be found in the daily practice of medicine, if medicine was to remain a living reality.