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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 1, No. 10 June 8, 1938

Bird in the Hand

Bird in the Hand.

The medical services were a murderous absurdity because doctors had a vested interest in ill-health. The interence to be drawn from this statement is that doctors do not practice preventive medicine because the less illness there is in a given community the less they can feather their nests. One must at once refute such a calumnious statement. Quite apart from the immoral nature or such practice is the fact that from the practical point of view the question as to whether a doctor is going to succeed, or not In practice is largely decided by the lay public on his ability to cure them quickly or their ills and prevent them getting those same ailments again. Further, one must here place on record the fact that New Zealand has the lowest Infant mortality in the world, the lowest tuber cular death rate, despite a highly susceptible native population, and the longest expectation of life of any country. These highly satisfactory vital statistics have been brought about by the loyal co-operation of the medical practitioners with the officers or the Health Department of New Zealand. Surely this is proof positive of the support given by doctors to preventive medicine.