WHERE DOCTORS DIFFER

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXII, Issue 47, 29 March 1935, Page 4

WHERE DOCTORS DIFFER

A doctor, giving evidence at Westminster County Court, refused to admit “that there was such a thing as neurasthenia. ’ ’ He said that he dealt with conditions of the human body and not abstract names. The term had been brought in, and it was time it was dropped. The witness, Dr. W. J. Adie, was giving evidence in a case concerning a claim for continued compensation to a workman, regarding whose neurasthenic incapacity to work following an accident doctors were at variance. Mr Edgar Dale, banister, representing the applicant, a. tunnel miner, said: “The Legislature has put in the hands of a nonmedical man the decision of such a point. Someone has to decide whether a man is truthful or not, and a doctor cannot decide that on one examination.” Judge Dumas: “I cannot help laughing at the position thus created.” Mr Dale: “Where doctors disagree what better judge between them can there be than a man of common sense and large experience of life.” The Judge, who sat witli a medical assessor, made an order for 30s a week compensation.