An Ex Officio Doctor

The famous Yankee docto”, S. M. Lambert, who on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation did so much to get hookworm under control in the South Pacific in the 1920’s and who also helped rejuvenate the Suva Medical School, arrived in Fiji in 1922 and recorded that he was “. . . a dog without a collar, medically speaking”. (See “Pack age Deal in Doctorates”, this page, and “One Man’s Paradise”, p. 80).

Official Fiji was suspicious of the doctor, and in the year of his arrival a law was passed which, according to Lambert, was for his special benefit. It stated, in effect, that no American could practise medicine in Fiji without a “special permit”.

He wrote in his book (Yankee Doctor in Paradise ) : “The special permit was far less potent than a chauffeur’s licence and my official status, if any, somewhat lower than that of the NMP. Until 1937, I was not legally qualified (in Fiji), to treat anything but hookworm. . .

When Dr. McGusty came to power in Suva (as Chief Medical Officer), he huffed and puffed and said, ‘All nonsense’—and proceeded to get me a respect able licence. In 1937, the Empire discovered that I was in Fiji, and I joined the British Medical Association.”