HEALTH HINTS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 299, 16 December 1911, Page 15

HEALTH HINTS.

A CHILDISH COMPLAINT. Grinding the teeth through the night tune is • condition weU known in children. • It always arises from some reflex irritation in the alimentary canal, .and in the great majority of cases—in children, at any rate—this irritation may be accounted for by the presence,of worms. This, however, is not essential, as intestinal indigestion of any kind is liable to produce it It is a safe procedure, however, in such cases to attempt the dlslodgment of the hypothetical worms, and the treatment will depend upon the species of worm which is present. Most cases will respond to a grain of santonin twice a day for three days, and then a good dose of castor oil. If no worms are present, then five grains of bromide of sodium and ten grains of bicarbonate of soda for & child of, say, four or five years of age, twice a day, should be sufficient to quieten the trouble.

SOMETHING ABOUT DEAFNESS. Deafness is due to all sorts of causes. It is popularly supposed to be a disease, and therefore quite easily relievable by some form of treatment, but medical men well know the hopelessness of attempting to treat most cases of deafness. Most people know that we have three ears—external, middle and internal. Deafness may be due to an affection of the middle or internal ears, or it may actually be caused by an affection of the nerve of hearing itself, or finally by some deficiency in the receptive portion of the brain. The last two forms of deafness are absolutely incurable, as are most cases which depend upon disease in the internal ear. There is some hope, however, when the disease is in the middle ear, although this ailment is very common and very tedious in its cure. The treatment usually consists in inflating the middle car either by a Politzer's bag or by the medical man passing a tube through the nose and into the eustachian tube, and so instilling medicated fluids or vapours by this means. Secondly, blistering the back of the ear, the object being to withdraw something from the seat of the disease in the middle ear, and, thirdly, the use of interna] medicine in the hope that the -ar bones and the mechanism of the middle ear may be loosened up thereby, but the whole treatment should be under the supervision of a trained medical man. Nothing is more hopeless than a case of middle ear deafness unless it is carefully watched and every advantage taken of the slightest improvement by varying the treatment