Medical evidence and the laws relating to compensation for injury / by R.J. Collie, M.D., J.P.

  • Robert John Collie
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Medical evidence and the laws relating to compensation for injury / by R.J. Collie, M.D., J.P. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/44 page 13
    at once ceased, and he became very abusive. I then left, but I learned afterwards that he was a pauper being transferred from one work- house to another, and that, on my exposing him, he had narrowly escaped being put by the bystanders under the pipe used for watering the engines. Malingering in Eye Disease is a little difficult to detect, but I have not yet found the device fail of juggling with plus and minus lenses. One feels almost sorry for the pretender, who with these so easily betrays himself. When complete amblyopia is feigned in one eye it can be detected in two ways: (1) by a prism, and (2) by the ordinary test for an alternating squint. The apparatus, as you know, consists of a sheet of glass with the word “theory” on it, the letters being alternately red and green. Suppose that the allegation is that the right eye is blind. A spectacle frame is placed in front of the eyes, with a green glass in front of the left eye and a red in front of the right. Through the green lens he can read only the green “ t-e-r,” and through the red glass he can read “ h-o-y.” If, therefore, he says that the word is ‘theory,” he sees with both eyes. If he suspects, change the lenses so that the green shall be in front of the right eye and the red in front of the left, or vary the coloured glasses until he gives himself away. Hernia. There is a growing tendency among workmen to say they are unlit for work on account of hernia. With a perfectly fitting truss, however, anyone can do manual labour. If, however, I were an employer of labour I should never employ anyone with a hernia, even though he wore a truss, for workmen are careless, and the day arrives when the truss does not fit. Strangulation may occur, and the employer is responsible. For the public service I always refuse at an entrance examination men with rupture whose work entails hard manual labour. I am always loth to recommend operations for the radical cure. Some of us, who are not operating surgeons, think there is a tendency on the part of these gentlemen to talk too lightly of the risks of operations on the abdomen. I asked a consulting surgeon recently what his mortality was for an operation which he lias claimed to have discovered, and his characteristic and amusing reply was, “ Less than nothing.” Do not forget that 15 to 20 per cent, of radical cures in adult life are failures. I often see the depression and discolouration of skin left by the pressure of a truss on candidates, who somewhat craftily leave the truss off the day they present themselves for' medical examination,
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