The New Zealand Medical School

NZMJ, 1925

The speeches delivered at the ceremony in connection with the laying of the foundation stones of the new building for the Medical School on 18th June, 1925, must have impressed afresh all who heard them with a sense of the importance of the standing of this institution in the community, and of the greater future that lies before it. The fact that the present requirements of the School include a building costing over £50,000 to erect, and an expenditure of at least £100,000 before it can be occupied, is itself sufficiently eloquent of growth and progress, even without the reinforcement of the instructive particulars supplied by the Chancellor of the University respecting the history of the School since the time of its inception. Mr. Sidey’s claim, advanced in no spirit of undue pride, that the Otago Medical School has grown to be “a great national institution” was, in the circumstances to which he was able to point, no more than a logical and just conclusion. And the stone-laying ceremony may be regarded as establishing the conclusion once and for all, beyond possibility of cavil. The address delivered by the Minister of Education was of special interest by virtue of his ready endorsement of the propriety of the Chancellor’s claim. In agreeing that the Medical School is not merely an Otago institution, but belongs to New Zealand, Sir James Parr observed, not without an appreciation of the humour of the situation, that this was a very serious admission to come from “a confirmed and parochial Aucklander like himself.” But the admission comes not the less gracefully on that account, with its backing of inevitability in Ministerial concession that the impossibility of the Government financing two medical schools in the country at the present time must be acknowledged. “It will take the Government all its time to finance one Medical School.”—Otago Daily Times.