Medical Congress.

Waikato Argus, Volume XXVI, Issue 4019, 24 February 1909, Page 2

Medical Congress.

By Telegraph.—Press Association Napier, Last Night.

The annual meeting of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Assocation has opened. The Mayor of Napier, Mr J. Vigor Brown, M.P., welcomed the delegates.

The president, Dr. T. C. Moore, of Napier, devoted the main portion of his address to the evils of patent and proprietary medicine. He said the medical profession had been strangely apathetic in the matter, and expressed the opinion that they owed a duty to the public, and that it was only right that they should give warning to the public against “the unscrupulous rogues who are not only robbing them of their money, but byholding out fallacious hopes of curing them of their ailments often cause them to lose precious time while they are taking their worthless or injurious nostrums instead of applying for aid to the proper quarter.” To remedy the evil it was necessary in the first place that the public should be educated up to it and he asked if arrangements could not be made to publish the prescriptions of those vaunted “cure alls.” In the second place the profession should try to strengthen the hands of the Health Department, which is anxious to abate the evil, but cannot act vigorously unless backed up by public opinion, medical and lay.