Doll With Heart Trouble

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32012, 12 June 1969, Page 1

Doll With Heart Trouble

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 11. A toy doll in New Zealand is suffering from angina pectoris, slightly elevated blood pressure and nervous upset The diagnosis was given by a Christchurch herbalist after receiving a sample of the doll’s synthetic hair through the mail, the Consumers’ Institute says in a newsletter issued today. The same postal diagnostician, who thought he was working on samples of human hair, divined that a second “patient” was suffering from high blood pressure and pericarditis.

The sample was, in fact, cat fur, the institute says. These facts were revealed after the Consumers’ Institute inquired into the diagnostic activities of a Christchurch firm. The firm advertised it was able to diagnose people’s health problems from inspection of a sample of hair. Members of the Consumers’ Institute staff sent the doll’s hair and cat fur to the firm. A 25-year-old girl sent in hair from her own head, and was diagnosed as suffering from carditis and

pernicious anaemia. A subsequent medical check proved she had neither condition, the institute says. The institute commented: “We are at a loss to understand how the firm can claim to diagnose bodily ills from samples of hair when it cannot even identify the samples for what they are. In the case of the synthetic hair from the head of the doll there can be no question whatever that the diagnosis is totally erroneous.” The institute advised people to take all their bodily aches and pains to qualified medical people.