INFANTILE PARALYSIS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21989, 13 January 1937, Page 7

INFANTILE PARALYSIS

TO THE EDITOB OF THE PBES9. Sir, —In the garden notes of a paper published last week there was the following advice:—"Spray with arsenate of lead to control leech on plum trees and codlin moth on apples and plums." And in the same issue there appeared azaf advertisement of apples and plums for sale. About 12 years ago in California there appeared a strange epidemic. After careful investigations, the cause of the outbreak was considered by many persons to be the eating of fruit that recently had been sprayed with arsenate of lead. Again, a friend of mine who worked in an orchard, his work being to make a thin paste with the arsenate of lead to enable it to mix with the spray, being ignorant of the dangerous poison, when afternoon lunch was brought out to the men. merely rubbed his hands with grass. The arsenate of lead contaminated the food that he ate, causing. partial paralysis in his legs and often cramp in the calves of his legs. Some person may say infantile paralysis is infectious; therefore, the eating of fruit recently sprayed with arsenate of lead cannot be the initial cause of the recent outbreak; yet often a cold develops into a fever, which becomes infectious, while the cause of the cold was damp bed linen or wet clothes.—Yours, etc., X YZ January 10. 1937.

TO THE EDITOB OF THE PRESS. Sir, —I heartily endorse "Swimmer's" contention in 'The Press" to-day. The health authorities have it all in their own hands. What is to prevent their closing of all public meetings for adults for three weeks—race meetings as well? New Zealand and its work wotild still go on without the grim possibility of having the dread illness carried into every nook and corner of our beautiful little country. Our public men and women who are so constantly speaking of brain-fag and overwork would have a compulsory rest, and we should all benefit from the enforced peace and quietness. It seems ridiculous to keep on about closing everything to children under 16 when so many of the patients are adults of both sexes. Or are race and other meetings to be allowed until we have a repetition of the trouble we had in 19,18, when the influenza, epidemic was raging from one end of New Zealand to the other before the medical authorities had thought of preventing the holding of public meetings?— Yours, ete., F.M.H. January 12, 1937.