THE DIARY OF A DOCTOR WHO TELLS

Evening Star, Issue 22596, 13 March 1937, Page 2

THE DIARY OF A DOCTOR WHO TELLS

PARENTS V. NON-PARENTS Monday, March 8. “ The plain fact is,” I said bluntly to young Mrs Harres, “ you would be much better if you had a baby to look af Mrs Harres has been seeking advice about a purely nervous dyspepsia and other signs of early neurasthenia. She has nothing to think about but the state of her own health “ Not for me. she laughed a little hysterically. “My cider brother was killed in the last war and my other brother made an invalid for life. I’ve no intention of producing more cannon fodder.” . . _ This attitude is growing. Despite inducement from leaders in Germany and Italy the birth rate there is falling. It is falling even quicker in other countries. If the men won’t do something about preventing wars the women will. . . Perhaps the most serious point about the decline in the birth rate is that it is dividing people into “parents” and “non-parents,” two sections who have a fundamentally different outlook on many things, from the expenditure of public money to general censorship. What is quite all right for grown-up people is not necessarily all right for boys and girls in their early teens, a point which parents realise much more acutely than non-parents. Non-parents are growing in strength, andl there are seven million of them in America alone. -To be married and deliberately to avoid parentship is in my opinion a psychological calamity.

Tuesday, March 9. Naturally, the Haroombes were very alarmed when I told them that their daughter Margaret, aged seven, had diabetes. “ Surely there’s no hope for her at that age,”- sobbed the mother. “ On the contrary,” I said, “ there are alive and well to-day many people in their twenties who were the first of the * insulin babies,’ as we called them.” “ I hoard only the other day that insulin was not really a cure at all,” said the father in-a broken voice. “Insulin, wisely used, may not bo what is technically known as a cure,” I explained, “ but with its help diabetics can live a happy normal life with their erstwhile fatal foe kept well at bay. “ There’s just this very important point,” I explained. “ After Margaret comes out o,f hospital it will be essential to keep her on the strictest diet till word is given otherwise. Insulin enables the patient to take a diet adequate for normal strength and weight, but diet is the thing, whether insulin is used or not.” When I was a young hospital resident insulin was just coming in. I had a little fo,ur-year-oldi patient who was on a strict diet. There came to see him an elderly resident who “ didn’t believe in this new-fangled food treatment.” Unknown to us she gave the little fellow a pound bar of chocolate. Next day he died, murdered by kindness. Wednesday, March 10. Firms and even Government offices qre awakening to the value of having a health inventory taken of every new employee. To-day I had to fill in health form for Irene Makin, who is about to start work. The form was comprehensive, but there was one omission. An X-ray report of the chest was not asked for. We do not make enough use of the preventive use of the X-ray. We ask health examinees long questions about the health of their father and mother and omit to make a water-tight examination of their own health. Tuberculosis, which accounts for more deaths between the ages of 15 and 25 than any other disease, is detectable by X-ray much sooner than by any other examination. As a matter of fact, an X-ray picture sometimes shows advanced tuberculosis, which was quite unrecognisable by other methods. Every nurse entering a hospital should have an X-ray examination of her chest beforehand. For some years they’ve been examining the Vienna tramway employes along these lines. After nearly 10 years they have achieved the result of having less tuberculosis than any other form of disease in Vienna. Much illness would be saved if at the ages of 18 and 24, everyone had their lungs X-rayed. Thursday, March 11. “ Why doesn’t the modern doctor ask you to poke out your tojigue? ” said old Mrs Geens to me this afternoon. “ When I was a girl it was the first thing old Dr Watson, our family doctor, used to ask us to do.” “ It’s just that we’ve got more accurate methods of diagnosing things,” I explained, “ though, mark you, it’s probable that we can still learn a good deal from tongues.” “ One tongue’s very like another to me,” redied the old lady, “ though, of course, I know the nasty, dirty tongue of stomach trouble.” “ Yes,” I replied, “ for home diagnosis purposes the whtiish-grey furred tongue is a sign of gastro-intestinal trouble, and prabably constipation, though sometimes you see it in amemia, or even ‘ nerves.’ ” “What other tongues are there?” asked Mrs Geens. “ The thick coating of the fever tongue, the special strawberry look of the scarlet fever variety, the dry tongue of the person with the poor appetite and indigestion, and so on.” “That remdnis me,” answered the old lady. “ One of the grand-children had a couple of nasty little ulcers on her tongue yesterday. I told her mother to try some borax and glycerine mixture. It used to be the favourite remedy when I was a girl.” “And it still is,” I assured her. Friday, March 12. Some crisp sentences culled from this ■ week’s reading:— Your health at the age of four is what others have made you; your health at 40 is what you have made yourself. Play often. Play, keeps old age at hay. Do not expect good health without effort, for health must be earned. The Bank of Energy will always oblige with short-term loans, but it invariably ruins the customer who tries to outwit it with heavy unredeemable overdrafts. A babv is just a long alimentary canal with a lot of noise going on at one end and little sense of responsibility at the other. Names in this Diary are fictitious. (.Copyright.)