Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

is awakening to the necessity of asserting its rights against encroachments on every side. With a united profession, resolved on this vital principle to sink all minor differences and to forget all jealousies, the conflict need not be long nor the result doubtful."

TH

THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.

HE recent meeting of the British Medical Association, held at Carlisle, July 28, 29, 30, 31, was fully up to the standard, which, during late years, has been reached by that greatest of all medical societies. The most interesting feature, as far as Canada is concerned, was the acceptance of the invitation from the local branch in Montreal to hold the meeting of 1897 in that city. The British Medical Journal (August 1), in a leading editorial, cordially endorses the decision of the council, which, we are pleased to say, was unanimous. We take the following from the Journal's interesting article:

"The deputation which attended the meeting of the council of the association to make the formal request that the association should go to Montreal next year consisted of Dr. G. E. Armstrong, Professor of Clinical Surgery, McGill University, and surgeon to the General Hospital, Montreal, and Dr. J. G. Adami, Professor of Pathology in the McGill University, and Pathologist to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal; but these gentlemen, who represented the Montreal branch, were supported by Dr. I. H. Cameron, Professor of Surgery, University of Toronto; Dr. A. B. Macallum, Professor of Physiology in the University of Toronto; Dr. Peters, Professor of Clinical Surgery in the University of Toronto; and Dr. Doolittle, Lecturer in Therapeutics in the University of Trinity College, Toronto.

Professor Armstrong and Professor Adami, in presenting the invitation to the council as representatives of the Montreal branch, promised that a cordial reception awaited the association in Montreal; and Professors Cameron and Macallum, as representatives of Toronto, cordially endorsed the invitation of the Montreal branch in the name not only of Toronto, but of the Dominion.

The council accepted the invitation without a dissentient voice. Professor T. G. Roddick, the president of the Montreal branch, has been nominated as president-elect. Dr. Roddick is Professor of Surgery in the McGill University, and consulting surgeon to the Royal Victoria Hospital at Montreal. He represents Montreal in the Dominion Parliament, having succeeded Sir Donald A. Smith, now the High Commissioner of the

Dominion in this country. Professor Roddick is one of the leading surgeons of the Dominion, and is widely known both on account of his professional eminence and his social influence with all classes.

It will be remembered that this is not the first occasion upon which the wish of our Canadian associates that the British Medical Association should meet in Canada has been made known. Sir William Hingston, at the Nottingham meeting, when he delivered the address in surgery, and Dr. Osler, himself an old Montreal graduate, in a speech that will be remembered by all who were present at the Bristol meeting, have given public utterance to the desire on the part of our Canadian confrères to wel come the association to the Dominion."

As our readers are aware, the British Association for the Advancement of Science will hold its meeting in 1897 in Toronto; and it is expected that a date will be selected which will allow the members of the association to go to the Montreal meeting after they have finished their work in Toronto.

THE NEW ACT RELATING TO BIRTHS, MARRIAGES,
AND DEATHS.

THE

HE Act recently passed by the Ontario Legislature contains some clauses which are important from a medical point of view. The clauses especially affecting physicians are those which require them : (1) To report all births to the registrar in each division.

(2) To report all deaths to the medical health officer of each municipality.

The following are the clauses referring to these matters :

16. It shall be the duty of every qualified medical practitioner attending at the birth of any child born within this province to give notice forthwith thereof to the registrar of the division in which the child was born, giving, as far as possible, the particulars required in the form provided by the Registrar-General, with such additional information as may, from time to time, be required by the Registrar-General, in forms to be supplied through the division registrar.

17. In registering the birth of an illegitimate child, it shall not be lawful for the name of any person to be entered as the father unless at the joint request of the mother and the person acknowledging himself to be the father; and in all cases of the registration of the birth of illegitimate children, the division registrar shall write the word "illegitimate" in the column set apart for the name of child, and immediately under the name, if any.

22. Every duly qualified medical practitioner who was last in attendance during the last illness of any person shall forthwith, on notice of the death of such person, send to the medical health officer of the municipality in all cities, towns, and villages, for inspection and subsequent transmission to the division registrar, or, in case there is none, to the division registrar of the division in which the death took place, a certificate under his signature of the cause of death, according to the form prepared by the Registrar-General, to be provided by the division registrar, who shall be furnished with such forms, and who shall supply them to the physicians resident within his municipality.

23. No removal for burial of the dead body of any person shall take place, and no undertaker, clergyman, sexton, householder, or other person, shall engage in the burial of the dead body of any person unless a certificate of registration has been previously obtained and shown to the person so removing or engaging in the burial of the dead body. Provided that when death from a contagious disease has occurred in any township a certificate of registration from the nearest division registrar after revision by the medical health officer of the township and his certification thereof endorsed thereon shall be sufficient; but such division registrar shall forward the certificate to the registrar of the division in which the death occurred.

Correspondence.

DR. SANGSTER RISES TO OBJECT.

To the Editor of THE CANADIAN PRACTITIONER:

STR

IR,-My attention has just been directed to an editorial in your last issue, in which you do scant justice to a letter of mine that appeared in the July number of The Medical Review. Kindly afford me space in this month's PRACTITIONER to correct some of the more conspicuous inaccuracies and fallacies of your article.

You state that I threaten "fearless criticisms of every thought, word, and action of each and every member of the council." My letter in the July Review is before the profession, and a reference to it shows that what I did say is simply that to someone would be deputed the "duty of fearlessly criticizing every vote given and every contention set forth by each member of the council." I distinctly limit the proposed criticism to votes and arguments, and you make it appear that I propose that someone shall attempt the impossible task of reviewing not only every word and every action, but, worse still, every thought of every member of the council! Is this fair and honorable journalism?

You say that "it appears" (i.e., from my letter) "that constitutional methods have grown somewhat tedious and monotonous to some of these gentlemen," and, further, that they (we) have now "decided to enter into an aggressive and unconstitutional warfare." Can you point out a single instance, from first to last, in which the executive of the Defence Association, or anyone assuming to speak, or to write, or to act in its behalf, has used or proposed to use methods of warfare which any recognized or competent authority would pronounce unconstitutional or unparliamentary? It was decided that an effort should be made to rectify existing abuses constitutionally through the council itself. This does not imply--although you have chosen to put that forced construction upon it—that these abuses cannot be constitutionally rectified in any other way, or that anyone proposed to seek their rectification by means other than constitutional. Such an effort has been made, not only once, but twice, and it was, on both occasions, frustrated, as I have explained in this month's Review, by a machine which, while it is suffered to exist in the council, precludes all

hope of future success in that direction. We know that our demands are righteous, and our duty to our constituents forbids us to cease from vigorously pressing them. To that end we propose, in the first place, to appeal constitutionally to the electorate, so as to secure, at the approaching elections, a council which, from a professional point of view, shall be more happily constituted. Failing in that, we shall seek redress from the legislature, which is our final court of appeal. You stigmatize this course as unconstitutional, and imply that it is unparliamentary and not respectable. Yet you must know that there is not a member of the House of Commons, of any note, whose votes and contentions have not, during the past six months, been time and again sharply and even viciously criticized by one or other of his fellow-members on the public platforms or in the public press. Have such men as Laurier, Tupper, McCarthy, and Wallace pursued devious, or unparliamentary, or unconstitutional, or discreditable courses when on the platform or in the daily newspapers they have appealed to the political electorate for a change in the complexion of the House, or when they have hammered at the policy or exposed the unfaithfulness of any individual member or members whose votes or contentions they were reviewing? I feel sure, sir, that not even your youthful zeal, as a newlyfledged authority on constitutional modes of procedure, will prompt you to answer this question affirmatively. And, if not, how do you propose to justify your unwarrantable assertion that we had grown tired of constitutional means and purposed resorting to unconstitutional methods of warfare? It is quite within your province to aspire to become the Mentor of the profession, but do you think that editorials such as this are calculated to so win the confidence of the electorate that it may eventually accept your mere dictum as authoritative on matters of constitutionalism and fair dealing?

You say that practically I "advise members of the profession to refuse to pay their assessment dues." While I claim that, under the circumstances detailed in this month's letter to The Review, I should be amply justified in offering such advice, I deny that I have done anything of the kind. I have received and answered scores of letters asking for informa tion and direction on this matter, but I have uniformly declined to assume the responsibility of advising the writers not to pay. I have explained, as I did in my letter to The Review, the facts and the law as it applies to those in arrears, but I have strictly left it to each individual to decide for himself whether he shall pay or refuse. Any fair man will agree with me that the plain inference to be drawn from this part of my letter is that, while members of the college may be and probably are safe in refusing to pay up before March, 1898, their position thereafter, if they still refuse or neglect to pay, becomes a somewhat risky one.

« ForrigeFortsæt »