can read the address of the Chief Justice without perceiving that this unnecessarily severe tone has been taken up. What are the facts of the case? There are two grades of professional misdemeanour laid down by the Cape Act. The Council has been advised by its legal advisers that, according to the wording of Section 13, not only can the minor charge be raised to the major grade in the course of an inquiry if the evidence appears to justify this course, but that the Council has no power to indict any man on the major charge in the first place, saving in the case of a definite persistence in exactly the same class of misconduct as that upon which he has before been tried and reprimanded. Not only has this been the opinion of the Council's own legal adviser, but one of the most eminent men at the Cape Bar some years ago advised a client who was laying a complaint against a medical practitioner, in the same sense. Further, at the time of the well known Scholtz case, this very point as to whether the Council had or had not the right to raise the grade of a charge from the minor to the major after hearing the evidence, was prominently raised by the member of Council who opposed the conviction, as well as by champions of the accused gentlemen outside, and, we are in a position to know, was urged very forcibly during the efforts, eventually successful, to induce the Government to refuse acceptance of the Medical Council's recommendation. The Government of the day included two of the most eminent of South African lawyers, the present Chief Justice of the Transvaal and the present Mr. Justice Graham. The House of Assembly had it from the lips of the latter, later on, that both his learned colleague and himself had gone most carefully into the matter, and that, although the Government thought the punishment too drastic, the Council had in "no way exceeded its legal powers." Sir Pieter Faure, on the same occasion told the House that "the findings of the Council were reviewed by the law officers of the Government, and the papers were found to be exactly in accordance with everything that could be required by law," And Sir Pieter is himself an attorney, and would not be likely to misrepresent the opinions of the Government law officers. And lastly, the particular recommendation to erase Mr. Meyer received the confirmation of Government, which, as every one knows, means, in such a case, the Attorney-General, to whom all the papers, with the shorthand notes of the evidence and the deliberations of the Council, were sent.

No one will imagine it possible that so acute a lawyer as Mr. Sampson would have overlooked the grave defect in the Council's procedure which has been revealed by the judgment, had he admitted it to be a defect. We thus arrive at the position that at least four of the most eminent lawyers in South Africa, in addition to the Medical Council's counsel, read Clause 13 in the way which the Cape Supreme Court now states to be so erroneous as to constitute the legal ground for upsetting the decision. This, of course, does not for one moment imply that the interpretation was correct, but it does most emphatically prove the bona fides and honesty of the Council. The Council has erred, but it has erred in such company as to acquit it from any imputation of having strained the law. Surely if a man guides himself by the best legal advice he can obtain, this is the best possible proof of his intention of acting legally. To accuse a lower Court of wilfully disregarding the principles of justice, which has been done, for it must be noted that the judgment does not speak of passive ignorance but of an active mental process, not of "law" which a lay body lay body is not supposed to understand, but of "justice" which every man is presumed to have a conception of, surely requires the proof that the Supreme Court's interpretation of Section 13 was a thing which ought to have been obvious even to the lay mind, instead of something so open to argument that the best lawyers of the day take sides upon it. To cast the imputation of wilful dishonesty of purpose in the exercise of judicial functions upon any body of men, is a most serious thing, and one about which even the judges of the Supreme Court should hesitate. That it is felt keenly and painfully goes without saying, especially as some of the newspapers have taken the Chief Justice's judgment as a text for openly accusing the members of the Medical Council, possibly as honourable gentlemen as the editors themselves, of deliberate and calculated malevolence. One of them, a Cape Town daily which should know better, has even gone further, and said that the Government accepted the Council's recommendation because it contains SO many doctors, another way of saying that the instinct of the whole medical profession towards injustice follows its members even into the chairs of Ministers of the Crown. The Medical Council is quite prepared, we doubt not, to have itself adjudged in error. It naturally smarts when, in

common with the profession generally, it is accused of that worst of all crimes judicial malevolence. We are not for one moment defending the Section of the Act which has been held to imply that the only charge upon which a man could ordinarily be indicted is a minor one which can be raised to a major finding in the course of the trial. On the contrary, we have always considered that it is a cumbrous procedure, if not contrary to the general principles of jurisprudence. We have placed on record our opinion that, in any amended Act, it would be far better to class all conduct complained of under the simple heading of "improper and unprofessional," and to leave it to the Council to adjudge any penalty ranging from simple reprimand, through suspension, to a recommendation for erasure, that the evidence might appear to justify. But, if our legal friends will pardon us for mentioning the fact, statute law overrides every other kind of law, and the Council could do nothing but administer the Act as it is interpreted by competent legal authority. The fault is not that of the Council, but of the man who drafted the Bill and the Legislature which passed it into law. The omission

of any intermediate penalty, such as suspension, is, in our opinion, a very grave defect, but it is one which the Council has always done its best to remedy in a circuitous fashion, by restoring to the Register, after a period, the men whom it has at different times removed. It publicly put on record the fact, in the case of Dr. Scholtz, that it would be willing, after three months' interval to consider the restoration of his name, and in the case of Mr. Meyer we are perfectly certain that it would have extended the same consideration to him as was accorded to

far graver cases of misbehaviour. To represent the Council as a body bent upon persecution, as has been done with an accompaniment of vulgar abuse, literary and pictorial, is a gross breach of good taste, and if the maligned party had been an ordinary magistrate instead of a lay body with judicial powers, would have been roundly condemned. Equally unjust and absolutely devoid of foundation in fact, is the assertion that the Council "smells out" offenders. The Council in no single case ever takes notice of any alleged improper action until that action has been forced upon its notice by a formal complaint. It never even attends to an informal letter, still less does it act upon personal knowledge by its members of breaches of its rules. We state these facts advisedly, because some members of the profession are under the impression

that the Council is a sort of medical criminal investigation department, and constantly complain of it because it declines to act as such. It cannot be too widely known that, according to the terms of the Act, unless they are again misinterpreted. the Council has no option but to inquire into any and every case of complaint, however frivolous, lodged either by "the Minister in charge of the Department of Public Health or by any member of the public." And, unfortunately, such is human nature in certain quarters of Colonial life, that, on the tu quoque principle, one case leads to another. The man who has been haled before the Council somehow finds the most acceptable solatium to his wounds in the blissful occupation of haling up somebody else. This tu quoque line of argument also operates largely amongst the press critics of the Council. Condemning the prohibition of advertising as a selfish restriction designed to serve the interests of the Councillors and their friends, they justify their contention by at once raking up every ridiculous pretext for bringing the most innocent. practices under the advertising ban. In other words, holding the law to be wrong, they extend it much further than ever its framers dreamt of doing. And, holding the profession to be ridiculously punctilious they see beams where the most scrupulous medical man never sees a mote. When we are asked by our mentors outside, who know so much more about medical ethics then we do ourselves, to brand as advertising such things as the putting name and qualifications on a brass plate, the driving a motor car, the giving of a public lecture, the appearance on a public platform, the signing a letter with the initials of one's university degrees appended, the advertising for a locum in a newspaper, or the announcement in a medical paper of a readiness to take resident patients, the limit of malevolent absurdity seems well nigh reached. En passant, one may mention that the journalist or the politician generally considers the use of the tu quoque argument as being the surest sign of a bad case. One word more. The present mode of adjudicating upon professional offences in this country is that in the first place they go before a professional body, acting with the minimum of legal form or expense, and in the second they pass under the review of a trained lawyer in the person of the Attorney-General for the time being, the latter provision for review being non-existent in Great Britain, where the Council decides without appeal. The procedure which our outside critics want to substitute is trial before the

Supreme Court, the Medical Council acting merely as the initiators of the prosecution. Now, under the present system, an accused party need only appear personally without legal assistance, or if he prefers it. may be represented by a deputy who need not even be a lawyer. Under the Supreme Court procedure, he must go through all the expensive process of paying court fees, of engaging an attorney and counsel, plus coming down himself possibly with witnesses, or run the risk of almost certainly losing the case. And this to eventually have his case adjudicated upon by gentlemen who, however learned they may be in the law, can know little of the ethics of medical life. On the most frivolous charge, an honourable medical man might be involved in expenses running well into three figures, and judging by the temper of some sections of the public, such frivolous charges would be forthcoming in abundance.

Passim.

We make no apology for enlisting the sympathies of our readers all over South Africa, on behalf of the case of Miss Pellatt, mentioned in our report of the meeting of the C.G.H. (Western) Branch of the B.M.A. It cannot be expected that this sad case will appeal as directly to the profession generally as it undoubtedly does to those who had the pleasure of knowing Miss Pellat as a kindly and unassuming confrere and earnest unobtrusive worker in the Association, but even those who never knew her will remember that she is a colleague in sore distress, afflicted in a singularly terrible way. A promising professional career is absolutely stopped, and with it her only source of livelihood, for, with all due delicacy, we are compelled to mention that she is almost entirely without means. Under such circumstances, we do trust that our readers will feel it their duty to make some contribution towards the needs of an eminently deserving case. Treasurer of the Branch, Dr. J. L. Luckhoff, Rhodes Buildings, Cape Town, will gladly receive and acknowledge any subscriptiors. Perhaps the other branches will help officially.

The

The temperately written letter of Dr. Hallen in our correspondence columns is a contribution to the advertising question worthy of some attention. We cannot go with him in his comparison of newspaper advertising of any kind with brass plates and red lamps. This is treading on the very dangerous tu quoque lines to which we have elsewhere alluded. Red lamps and brass plates are timehonoured medical institutions, and no one in the profession condemns them as unethical, and therefore everybody is at liberty to use them on equal terms with everybody else. There is not in using them any of that breaking adrift from professional tradition which so often is only the starting point for very serious deviations. They are not nearly so susceptible of abuse as the printed

advertisement, and the public does not regard them as Tradesmanlike methods. Mention of the red lamp, by the way, is hardly to the point, as its use has almost entirely gone out in South Africa, and is rapidly going out in England.

But, with reference to the point Dr. Hallen makes with regard to the visits of dentists to small towns and villages, we admit that something may be said in favour. We are perfectly prepared, like any reasonable member of the profession would be, to admit that our professional rules must be considered in connection with the public good. The case of a dentist paying periodical visits to a village with no resident dentist appears to us to be the single case in which it is debatable whether the professional rule against advertising does or does not conflict with utility. The answer, we think, is one for the dental profession itself to give. If the dentists of the Colony think that some latitude in this direction should be given, we feel pretty confident that the Council will be prepared to consider any modification of the existing advertising resolution which they may suggest. But, as things stand, the resolution refers to "persons on the Medical and Dental Register," and the Council which, when it framed this resolution, was doubtless under the impression that dentists would resent any differentiation between them and medical practitioners, must apply that resolution all round. When a medical man accused of advertising points to a dentist as doing the same thing, the Council can only go by the actual wording of its resolution. We are pleased to hear that the President of the C.G.H. Dental Association has convened a meeting of the profession generally, and has taken measures to elicit the opinions of those unable to attend, the object being to discuss the whole question of dental advertising.

That

The Indwe Times, in an extremely virulent leading article, discusses, or rather declaims upon, the question of medical advertising, which it has a perfect right to do. It, however, combines with its declamation, an entirely uncalled for personal attack upon the editor of this paper, which is going entirely beyond the limits imposed on honourable journalism. To identify any personality with a newspaper is an absolutely improper thing, and a sin unpardonable against good taste. it is becoming a practice in this Colony amongst a certain class of newspapers, many of them very much better known than the Indwe Times, and has even found its way into the august precincts of Parliament, is no excuse. And it is still less excusable when the editor of a paper is not only personally abused, but personally persecuted. And the Times announces its intention of bringing the Editor of this paper personally to the bar of the Medical Council on the charge of allowing replies to advertisement for resident patients emanating from a medical practitioner, and appearing in a medical paper, to be sent to the office of that paper. Similar threats are uttered by Ons Land, a journal which should know better. We are perfectly prepared to face any criticism directed at this journal as a journal, but we protest against personal attacks on any individual connected with it. If the cause advocated cannot be served otherwise than in this questionable way, it can hardly be worthy of championship.

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