Since our last annual meeting, death has taken from our midst two dominant personalities whom this colony could ill afford to lose—The Hon. Richard John Seddon, whose zealous and self-sacrificing work for the welfare of the people included much that was of interest to the medical profession, and Dr. Duncan McGregor, the late, Inspector of Hospitals, in whom the highest scholastic attainments were combined in uncommon degree with shrewd practical knowledge of men and things. The medical profession lament the loss of these strong, brave men, and sincerely sympathise with their sorrowiug relatives.

The title of my address this evening is—
THE MEDICAL SERVICE OF NEW ZEALAND.

Being a review and criticism of the way in which the people of this colony are catered for, in regard to the prevention and cure of the various ills that flesh is heir to.

The duly qualified physicians and surgeons at present on the New Zealand Register, and who are actually practising in the colony, number roughly 600. The population of New Zealand is in round numbers 960,000, so that we have here one doctor to about every 1,600 of the inhabitants. A glance through the Register of the practitioners, will indicate that New Zealand now possesses a medical service decidedly ample in quantity, and on the whole, sound in quality.

By a recent act of Parliament, the portals of registration in New Zealand have been very properly narrowed. No one can now register as a medical practitioner who has not received the diploma of a school giving a complete modern medical education.

The curriculum of a modern medical school necessitates a minimum of five years of diligent study of the theory and practice of the various departments of medicine, and a large proportion of’ the practitioners spend six or seven years in thoroughly equipping themselves for their profession. It is fair then, that unregistered practitioners, men with no proper medical education, men without genuine diplomas, or with diplomas granted for financial consideration by some irresponsible body of charlatans, or puesdo [sic] scientists, is it fair that such men should be permitted to call themselves doctors, to delude the public into thinking that they are medical doctors, and to enter unjustly into competition with registered medical practitioners who have been obliged to spend so much time and so much money on education.

I am not speaking just at this moment of the ordinary quack. He comes under a different category, and I shall refer to him presently. He does little or no harm to the duly qualified medical practitioner. But the man who poses before the public as a qualified medical practitioner, when he is absolutely unregisterable as such, enters unfairly into competition with doctors; and the medical profession should demand that so monstrous a wrong to them and to the public should no longer be tolerated.

In the present state of the law there is no protection from this sort of thing. Actually the names of unqualified, unregistered individuals are printed on the telephone subscribers list, on the first page, amongst the doctors. The Council of the New Zealand Branch recently called the attention of the Postmaster-general and Minister of Telegraphs to this impropriety, and politely requested that the names of unregistered men should not be printed on the first page of the telephone list with the regular qualified practitioners. The Postmaster-general, after due consideration, replied that he is not prepared at present, to exclude the names of unregistered men from the telephone list of medical practitioners.