Sunday, September 8, 2024

Medical Society Opposing TB Conference, Sept. 30, 1924

Tuberculosis Conference to be Held in Wilson. . . Tuesday, Sept. 30th. . . Dr. McBrayer Writes the Gaston County Medical Society That the Physicians of His County Are Opposed to Any Effort to Prevent Disease, Under Cover of Personalities

Sanatorium, Sept. 7—In a letter made public today Dr. L.B. McBrayer, managing director of the North Carolina Tuberculosis Association, announces that the conference of the association will be held at Wilson Sept. 30. The conference has been invited to Gastonia by several organizations there, but the Gaston County Medical Society refused to join the invitation because of objections to Dr. McBrayer. In his letter the doctor charges that “a group of your physicians are endeavoring to camouflage their opposition to any and everything that will tend toward the prevention of disease in your country by a slur at one personally.” He also charges that this group of physicians is trying to sidetrack a movement in Gaston for a county sanatorium and tuberculosis clinic.

The letter, which is addressed to the Gastonia Chamber of Commerce, is as follows:

“Let me express to you, the Parent-Teachers’ Association, the Woman’s Club, and the various other civic organizations, my appreciation for your invitation to the North Carolina Tuberculosis Association to hold our annual conference in your thriving city. But on account of the refusal of the Gaston County Medical Society to join in the invitation, we will have to decline to accept, and the conference will be held in Wilson Sept. 30, on invitation of the County Medical Society, the county and city health departments and various other civic organizations is hardly worth while for a group of your physicians to endeavor to camouflage their opposition to any and everything that will tend toward the prevention of disease in your county by a slur at me personally.

ponsibility on Physicians

“It is, I believe, a policy of the State Board of Health that they will not enter upon any health work of any kind in a county unless invited to do so by the County Medical Society or a majority of the medical profession in said county; although I do not presume to speak for them, the State Medical Society, at its 924 regional(?) session in Raleigh, laid the responsibility for the prevention of disease and the doing of those things for the people o the county and more particularly to the children, that will make the people of their county more capable, more efficient, more healthy, better men and women, both physically and mentally, ordinarily spoken of in ?? way as the prevention of disease, upon the local physicians in the country. They need not do any part of the work themselves, but they are enjoined by all the precepts and traditions of the noble profession to which they belong and by our own State Medical Society, to point out to the people of their county the work needed to be done and the way of doing it. If they fail or refuse, they are responsible to their people and to their God.”

From the front page of the Wilson Times, September 9, 1924

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073953/1924-09-09/ed-1/seq-1/#words=September%2C+9%2C+1924

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