FAME WON BY ASTHMA CURE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 21

FAME WON BY ASTHMA CURE

From stretcher to set in a fortnight, the story of how a Danish chemist has found fame after a struggle for recognition of twenty-five years, and how a £60,000-a-year British film star became a "Knight without asthma" after having been pronounced incurable by eminent medical men. .'And all through creosote and a machine like a meat safe! The chemist is David Fingard, who lives in a Mayfair hotel, and the film star, Robert Donat. Behind the news of the film star's asthma treatment, lies the story of a cure which was offered to the Ministry of Health and refused, and the setting up of a special committee in order that the cure may now be made available for poor persons. In his rooms at a Mayfair hotel, Chemist Fingard told me how it all happened, says a writer in an English paper. "Donat was so bad that he was brought from a South Coast seaside resort on an ambulance stretcher to a London nursing home," said Mr. Fingard. "Here, incidentally, he received all sorts of asthma cures, but no film work for three months was the verdict of the doctors. "Hearing of me, Donat sent for my machine and asked for it to be installed in his Manchester Street nursing home. After two weeks, carried out under the supervision of his medical advisers, the treatment was so success-

ful that he was pronounced O.K. for film work by Lord Horder. "My machine is like a meat safe in appearance," Mr. Fingard continued, "and creosote fumes play an important part in the cure! "The apparatus actually contains 12 trays of liquid medicament, an oily brown mixture of creosote; phenol, iodine, aromatic substances, oils, and glycerine. Air is introduced through a tube leading to a box of dry calcium chloride, which filters off dust and microbes. "I had previously had some exceptional results with my treatment. A man who was gassed in the Great War, a blacksmith forty years of age, with shrapnel wounds in his chest, used to have asthmatic attacks three and four times a night and also during the day. "He had treatment for two weeks, and I suppose he must have been cured, because he has just taken out a policy for a £1000 first-class life. He travels 100 miles a day now, and he has put on over three stone in weight. "In my twenty-five years in England I have found it easier to perfect my machine than to gain recognition, although I must admit that I have been supported by Lord Horder and Sir Harold Fawcus, of the British Red Cross Association, and Dr. Thornton. "I am hoping my cure will be available for everyone now, especially the poorer classes, but I am a chemist, and my treatment is always carried out under the supervision of a doctor."