MEDICAL NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 102, 4 May 1925, Page 4

MEDICAL NOTES

SUNSHINE LAMPS

MILK AND TUBERCULOSIS.

I (FBOH OUK OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 24th March. Ur. M. J. Rowlands, speaking at a meeting of. the People's League of Health, stated that ten thousand children died m this country ■ every veaifrom tuberculosis owing to infection from tuberculosis cattle. Slaughter, of infected cattle, he said, would not be an effective remedy The real remedy lay in feeding the cattle in the proper way. Cattle were fed nowadays on residues from the substances from which margarine was prepared. He had experimented with these cakes, and found them to be deficient in vitamins, and it was pathetic to think that we were feeding children today on the products of these stuffs hi the case of beasts that he had fed' with these stuffs, they had all shewn disease. J*y .the use of foods rich in vitamins he had, however, succeeded almost entirely in excluding tubercle from his herds where every other method had failed. Vitamins were only present naturally in foods for a fewmonths during the year, and the enormous quantity of milk taken from a cow was.so unnatural that it was explainable that her- whole store of vitamins should be drained away. It was, he wag convinced, this lack of vitamins that was the cause of tuberculosis to-duv "I attribute," Dr. Rowlands said, "tuberculosis to milking and to the non-replace-ment of the vitamins." MUNICIPAL SUNLIGHT LAMPS. An artificial sunlight centre-has been opened at Highgate. A sunlight lamp n-w en^ l'esf» ted by the-"Save the Children Fund,'' and the expenses of the installation and. maintenance arc bemg-jHud by St. Pancras Borough Coun, Cli" „Th<; .^"tre, it is stated, is the first nt its. kind to be run as a municipal enterprise. r • The Mayor mentioned that the centre .tad been m operation for three weeks, and .in that time the fifteen children who were receiving treatment had all shown improvement in health. Sip Alfred-Fripp said the vast amount of money spent in the cure of the cripples who grew up in the slums would be far better spent in such preventive measures as that treatment. "The two emanation treatments, X-rays, and these new bottled. sunlieht. lumps, look like opening a wonderful era," he said, "in which so much, of the slashing which we surgeons have been doing will become unnecessary. It looks as if all cases of surgical, tuberculosis, to give one instance, will never need to be operated 5 i j,, ese Preventive measures are adopted." Professor Leonard Hill said the arcight they had there gave off the same beneficial rays as the sun. A baby should be exposed without clothes in the open air on any bright-day, so lon- !ls it was not permitted to get so cold as to. shiver or turn blue. He had suggest- , ed to the Hampstead Council that during the winter -some of these lamps should be inetaUed in the public baths and that two or three times a week all tlie school children should nttend the<=e arc-light baths, and, in the Jightest po^ eible clothing, dance around the lamps ihe council was considering the pro*, posal. r DANGER OF INFECTION FROM EGGS. Further details as to the way in which tuberculosis in man is due to tuber-, culosis m cattle, and may be due to the tuberculosis m poultry, have been "iven to the "Morning Post" by Dr Vl I Rowlands. In brief, his view'is that owing to the heavy demands in livestock on the farm the animals become depleted of vitamins and they are thus rendered easy victims to., tuberculosis which they pass on to man"lt would be no exaggeration," h 0 i said, . to state that half the poultry in this country suffer from tubercular disease, and it has been proved that poultry are able to convey tuberculosis to swine, so that there is every reason to Delieve that they may also transmit it to man. It is reasonable to believe that the egg of a tuberculous fowl may transmit infection through the egg to man, and the possibility of this is now under investigation. The theory is simple. For a young animal or plant to develop it must have a supply of vitamins. Therefore, milk, eggs, aud the seeds of <rrass are all rich in vitamins, which are derived from the bodies of the cow, the hen, and the substance of the fra°s To ensure the presence of the all-essential vitamins and other substances such as lime in the food for their offspring, the parent organisation will starve itself and thereby render itself liable to disease' and essentially to tuberculosis. "An essential of modem fanning should be to study exactly what the animal is able to absorb in the way of food and also the composition of the prodnc* which the farmer wishes to derive from it, it being remembered all the time that natural foods are rich in vitamins for only some four months in the' year What I have been able to prove on the farm is that if the essential vitamins are given to the cow it is possible to go on, milking her almost indefinitely without her suffering, any loss oWweisjnfc. It is possible a so to create l/erds, V suitable jeeding, that are free from tuberculosis. , It is necessary, however, for the feeder , and breeder of stock to work hand i ft hand with the bio-chemist"