INFANTILE PARALYSIS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22111, 5 June 1937, Page 20

INFANTILE PARALYSIS

TO THE EDITOR Of THE PRESS. Sir.—The infantile paralysis "epidemic” continues. The search for the responsible germ has proved somewhat prolonged not unnaturally, since no such germ exists. “Infantile paralysis is a deficiency disease, duo to lack of vitamin B in the diet. Germs, when present at all. are secondary to this. The conventional diet as misused by the groat majority of people, doctors and the representatives o. the Department of Health included, is dangerously deficient in vitamin B; also, often, In vitamins A, C, D, E. etc. Very large numbers of young people live continually on the very edge of a breakdown due to vitamin and mineral starvation; and a variety of fortuitous circumstances may suffice to precipitate an “epidemic” of cases. Children are more susceptible, because vitamin B is the vitamin particularly concerned with growth. Young animals therefore suffer more severely when deprived of it. As Major-General Sir Robert McCarrison, and many another since, has shown; animals deprived of vitamin B exhibit a train of symptoms, ending in paralysis, exactly similar to those in evidence in human beings. Before the stage of paralysis is reached. Ihe following unmislakeable warnings always appear:—(X) Distaste for food, loss of appetite, or depraved appetite; (2) gastro-intostinal derangements, indigestion, colitis, and intestinal fluxes: (3) loss of weight, weakness, lack of vigour; (4) headache, anaemia, tendency to puffy swelling, and unhealthy skin; (3r sub-normal temperature and depressing of circulation. He emphasises, further, that ill-health develops more rapidly and paralysis appears sooner, when lack of vitamin B is complicated by excessive and badly balanced diet, containing too much sweet, starchv, and fatty food. McCarrison deprived his animals suddenly and completely of vitamin B. In human beings more gradually, and not so comnletely deprived, a variety of other familiar symptoms make their appearanc". such as paleness, undue fatigue, difflcu’tc in concentration, irritability, bad tcclli. defective vision, anaemia, enlarged tonsils and adenoids, vague "rheumatic” pains, etc., etc. These are Nature’s shouted warnings. Since all this is quite widely known, and its vital Importance realised, why i l: the medical profession so obviously ignorant of it? And why docs it so invariably ignore, deride, or persecute (usually all three in turn), those who endeavour to warn the people? The answc is that medical men are taught that fferms, not wrong living, are the cause of disease. Most of us are too busy malcnn a living out of its svmploms to worry about the cause. Besides, what doctor wants to see disease abolished? We live, and thrive, unon abundance of it; and upon the public’s ignorance and panickv fear of it. But cheer up. good people! Be confident, quiet, and contented in mind; make wise use of natural unprocessed

1 foods: follow healthy general habits; and ! "infantile paralysis." together with almost | every other evidence of failure to obI serve natural law, will rapidly disappear, j Yours, etc.. I DR. ULRIC WILLIAMS.