MEDICAL NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 213, 9 September 1933, Page 8 (Supplement)

MEDICAL NOTES.

UNQUALIFIED PRACTITIONERS. PNETJMODINE FOR PNEUMONIA ULTRA-VIOLET RAY. (By PERITUS.) The feeling of tho public for the "unqualified" (that is, the unregistered) practitioner is demonstrated by the verdicts of juries in cases where the practitioner is charged with eomo neglect, mistake, or gross overcharge. Recently In London an unregistered practitioner, ■who had a house among the millionaires In Park Lane, and another, for the reception of patients in the country, was made to surrender the amount of his fee as damages to a lady who had become worse under his treatment. He had charged her twelve guineas weekly for a top room and had actually guaranteed to cure the skin disease for tho treatment of which ehe had applied to him. She was charged £123 16/, and, having obtained no relief, and been insufficiently fed, she naturally had a grievance. ,Thc jury could agree upon nothing but that ehe should claim that amount. It is obvious that there should be a standard of efficiency, or at least of knowledge, for the men who elect to practise medicine without State license of the country in -which they work. Unregistered men have made discoveries of value, and sometimes by unorthodox methods have done better than those of the regular profession, which has never claimed a monopoly of healing, "but rightly claims that eis or seven years of special study Rnd honestly-conducted examinations, usually followed by .a period of varied experience among the sick, gives them an exceptional knowledge of disease and its treatment. Should one or more pf these men fail to satisfy a patient, the patient looks in the direction of the unregistered man, on the off chance that relief lies in his power. It is usual for the regular profession, and the chemists, to have been tried before the unregistered man, and when he is successful he deserves congratulations. It is unlortunato that pretenders exist, both within and without the professional pale, who, by a display of special apparatus, or mumbo-gumbo pronouncements, impress and convince the ignorant. The cruellest of all frauds is the medical fraud.

Pneumodine. Patients so often recover from pneumonia "when treated by astonishingly varying methods, that a standard j-emedy has not yet been decided upon, and it is therefore of great interest to liear of the iodine preparation—given by the mouth—which a Nottingham doctor advises as a most reliable remedy, lavinf no dangers or ill-effects. It was first tried for the relief of symptoms in consumption, and patients were found to suddenly improve. Cough wae relieved, eputum diminished in quantity, pickness due to toxaemia or bronchial irritation passed off in a few days, appetite improved, and- night sweats subsided. Weight increased by as much as lib to 31b, in two cases by 51b in a ■week. In some of the febrile cases With the daily rise to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, normal temperature was regained in three to four weeks. The immediate effect on toxaemia, felfc by the patients as increase of- vitality and lessening of fatigue, waa followed by diminuiiion in chest signs. In most of the comparatively early cases the signs in the chest and the symptoms of activity disappeared in two to six months. Some who their usual occupation have remained in good health since.- Good results were also obtained in some old-standing moderately advanced cases of the chronic type. In others a comfortable standard of health ■was reached.'

In "whooping cough, bronchitis; bronchial asthma, pneumonia—the action, of pneumodine appeared to be even more prompt. For example, in a case of acute bronchitis in a child of three, with a wiry pulse, resp. 60 per minute, temperature 101 degrees Fahenrheit, ■with all the symptoms of penumonia, tut with physical signs consisting only of harsh breathing, after two doses of pneumodine emulsion the condition became normal. In a case of pneumonia ■with definite. consolidation in a man of 60, first seen two days after the onset, the temperature declined gradually and »J1 the eymptoms abated two days after starting treatment with pneumodine. In a case of "bronchial asthma previously treated with expectorant mixture and ephedrine to relieve the difficulty of breathing, not only the cough and •wheeziness but also the chest signs subisided in two daye, and it was no longer necessary to use ephedrinc. Two colleagues of this doctor have recently reported similarly good results in bronchial asthma. Pneumodino appeared to be particularly useful in cases of bronchitis of long duration. This appears to be good news for everybody.

; -i Ultra-Violet Ray. The Vhole etory of vitamins ie not yetrtold, for;;their apparent production by ; the" "action iof the ultra-violet ray brings the remarkable effect of invisible light-into the research. The wealthy unregistered practitioner I have, mentioned above, had a limitless belief in; but little knowledge of/this (which is not the violet ray of the'hair specialists) and it was a misuse of the light.which carried him into Court as a defendant. This light hae now been found to so niter the composition of vaseline that ■what has hitherto been no more than a stable non-rancid base for. ointments, lias, by irradiation, been transformed into a real antiseptic dressing of marked healing powers.