Sir James Elliott, medical journalist supreme

James Sands Elliott was editor of the New Zealand Medical Journal from 1911 to 1933. He was a powerful writer in a flamboyant style, erudite and filled with classical and literary allusions and quotations. We are told that doctors of the time, on receiving their journals, would turn first to the editorial to see "what JSE has got to say." He served the profession in numerous ways, as chairman of council and president of the New Zealand Branch of the British Medical Association (BMA), as president from 1929 to 1955 of the New Zealand Branch of the British Empire Cancer Campaign (now the Cancer Society), and as a member of the Medical Council, the Board of Health and the Medical Research Council. It was his outstanding ability as a medical journalist, however, which made him one of the most powerful figures in New Zealand medicine in his time. He ardently upheld worthy causes in the interests of the medical profession as he saw them and wrote trenchant editorials on those subjects.