ENGLAND'S CURSE

Evening Star, Issue 19127, 19 December 1925, Page 17

ENGLAND'S CURSE

FOGS AND DISEASE “ Pneumonia is the most deadly of all acute diseases: it is the type of those diseases of the respiratory organs which are the great curse of this country now that improved primary sanitation has brought the water-borne diseases under control. It kills, in England and Wales, between 30,000 and 40,000 persons every year —much 1 the same number as that for which pulmonary tuberculosis is responsible ” (writes “ Lens,” in the ‘ New Statesman.”). “ That takes years to kill: pneumonia ten days or so. It kills at all ages, but is the enemy of the very young and the old; unless, indeed, wo take the View of Sir William Osier that it is the old man’s friend. When a man is really tired of life he may indeed do worse than make an end, swiftly and with little pain, by means of this disease.

“ Forty years ago the bacteriology of the disease was worked out in the main respects. To-day it is the easiest matter to find, in the ‘ rusty sputum ’ of pneumonia, the pneumococcus of Fraenkcl, described by him and others during the years 1883-86. So much serves for diagnosis. “ But forty years have brought us absolutely notliing towards the core or the prevention of pneumonia, from these bacteriological discoveries. When (he crisis occurs, and, in favorable cases, the temperature drops perhaps Bdcg or more in a few hours, we must believe that some process of immunity has succeeded; and we might hope that a chemical product should be obtainable, like the anti-toxin which works such natural miracles in diphtheria. But we have none such. “ In these days we are at least learning not to raise the death rate by closing the windows, and doing all wo can to reduce the supply of oxygen to the respiratory surfaces, already dangerously reduced by the solidification of so much of the long. The antipyretics and sedatives, antifebrin and alcohol, and so forth, aro used with far less freedom. Windows aro opened. Nature is given a chance. Fewer patients are killed by treatment—and that is all we can say.

“ Such being the meagre record, surely a hearing should be gained for any suggestions towards the prevention of pneumonia—a phrase which, except from my own pen, I have nowhere seen. Do I, then, suggest that pneumonia is a preventable disease, as many of us have long asserted tuberculosis io be? Yes, indeed, I do. I have no doubt that, if we chose, we could reduce the death rate from this disease almost out of recognition. “ Urban smoke is unquestionably a casual factor of pneumonia and of broncl il-is. The relation has been known for many years. The Medical Officer of Health for Salford, in his latest report, published diagrams showing how flic death rate rises, after fogs in that borough. The same has been repeatedly shown in London. Citizens who regard me as a, fanatic mar reflect, whim next we have two or three days of fog. that many of ihemselves, just, ft fortnight' later, will consequently breathe their lasi.

“In Pillsburg, four years ago, I was told that the pneumonia, death ralchad there, been the, highest in the world, the worst figures being recorded not in the coldest sections on the hillsides, but in the smokiest. In our country Middlesbrough claims pre-eminence in respect, of pneumonia, as all who live or visit there may well believe. “ When we cease io burn our real we shall do more k. lower the pneumonia death rate than forty years of bacteriology and all our doctors put together. The elderly and affluent, of course, have long ago practised the prevention of pneumonia by rm pairing (o the Riviera every winter. Give them a, villa in Garavan from November to April, and they arc an unconscionable time a-dying, as many an expectant heir can attest.”