Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

DR MORRISON AND THE RIO TINTO
COMPANY.
TO HIE EDITOR.
—Yours, &c.,
GEO. ERNEST MORRISON., M B, C.M.,
F.R.G.S.
SIR,-In to-day’s paper you speak of [?]y
having been connected in Spain with the
“ Rio Tinto Trading Company." Will you,
in justice to this company, kindly permit me.
to correct the wrong conception thatiaiih e i 7
to be formed by your referring to it >/,
trading company. The Rio Tinto C omp ,„
ia the greatest mining corporation in the
world. The market value of its property*
the time of my service was £21,300*0®
sterling English. It is a copper m 'i
employing in Sp >in alone more than 55fiJ
work people who are pud £450.000 p;t
annum in wages. Its medical department
of which I was director in chief, has on itl
books the names of 30 000 persons, min'
women and children, dependent on the com.
pany, who are entitled to medical attendance
by the company’s doctors, and medicine!
and pecuniary relief, and in the csss of i
workman injured at his work tn board aod
lodging and half pay during all the timec!
his illness and convalescence. There are 14
doctors in the service, 11 qualified and three
practioantes, there are three hospitals witi
200 beds under English matrons, and fire
convalescent homes. In the medical dp
partment there are chaplains, sacristani aod
acolytes; there is a sanitay corps and an am
bulance corps. There are seven cherahti who
dispense 70.000 prescriptions per annum,
costing £3OOO. The mine itself io 53 m.ilu
inland from its port, Huelva, with which it
is connected, hy its own narrow gauge rail
way, terminating in a pier, half a mile lone,
which cost £250,000, and ia considered cue
of the finest engineering works in existence.
There is a special train service to enable one
of the doctors to daily visit the Etntions ca
the line. In the mine there are 7500 em
ploye!; in Huelva there are 2000 eraplojk
Tbs hospitals in the two placea, 53
miles apart, are connected by telephone.
The chief medical officer, sitting in bis
office in the hospital on the Alto de la rani
in Rio Tinto, is in immediate telephonic
communication with every important lectico
of the mine, and with all the station!
on the 53 miles of railway to Huelva. The
Rio Tinto mine has the most liberally fur
nished medical service of any private corpo
ration in the world. Its organisation ii
magnificent, and I wish that I had space to
describe to you the splendid syitem hy
which distress is prevented or at once re
lieved in every portion of tlis immeme
property under the dominion of the com
pany. When in May, ISSS, I 1111
appointed assistant medical efficer to
this company it was over the beads
of S 4 applicants. When I resigned the
post of senior medic si officer in order to
gratify a love of travel, which was never
satiated till I settled in the eerene tran
quility of my present position, there were
428 candidates for my post, and it is, I
believe, the most coveted post that can he
held by any English surgeon on the con
tinent of Europe.
[Dr MorrißonV letter strengthens our pen*
tion. It ia the Hospital Critic who sp
plies the term “ boy surgeons” to luch»
medico as Dr Morrison was when ne re
ceived the important appointnirnt refers
to. We consider the term foolish ana
offomiivfi; so, evidently, does Dr Morrison.
—Ed.] _
$