DUST DISEASE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 224, 21 September 1935, Page 10

DUST DISEASE.

RESEARCH WORK. DOMINION OPPORTUNITIES. EH. F. J. GWYNNE'S OPINION. The necessity that exists in New Zealand for experimental work dealing with the treatment of miners' lung diseases was mentioned by Dr. F. J. Gwynne, prominent radiologist of Auckland, who returned by the Monterey this morning after attending the B.M.A. conference in Melbourne. He pointed out that there was some unique work being done on this subject in Australia, and that the opportunity was present in New Zealand for extensive and valuable research.

Dr. Gwynne said that he spent a good deal of time with Dr. Badham, of the Health Department in Melbourne, where they were making some remarkable studies of various dust diseases affecting miners. By the correlation of the results of X-ray and post-mortem examinations and the chemical analysis of the dust that was inhaled in the mines, and later recovered from the lungs, they had gained quite a lot of information on the effect of carbon on coal miners and of silica and sericite oii quartz workers. This work was being done in conjunction with experiments on guinea-pigs, which were exposed to similar conditions to those existing in the various mines.

"It seems to me, from my work in the examination of gold miners seeking pensions, that there is a great opportunity offering in New Zealand for research on this subject," said Dr. Gwynne. "We conld do quite a lot of good work here in the alleviation of the present position."

Dr. Gwynne said that the radiological section of the conference had been very well attended, and they had covered a wide range of subjects. Ho was particularly impressed with the demonstrations given by Dr. Scar, of Sydney, on bone conditions and X-ray examinations. Dr. Sear, he said, was a world authority, and l.is work at the conference was of the "super-super" quality.

Dr. Gwynne discovered that in Auckland the standard of work is quite up to the quality of overseas cities. In X-ray examination they were able to do here, he said, almost anything that was done anywhere else. That had been a phase that Australian and New Zealand doctors had noticed at the conference. Overseas doctors, who had come to teach, had told them that in many ways they had been the pupils.