TALKS ON HEALTH.

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 1797, 18 May 1912, Page 3 (Supplement)

TALKS ON HEALTH.

(By a. family doctor.)

WHAT IS THE CAUSE?

I have often laid down the law that it is useless to attempt to treat a symptom unless you first understand its real cause and origin.. , How can 1 treat a case of lameness unless I know whether, the lameness is due to. tubercular disease of the hip or water on the knee or a nail in the boot? 1 cannot advise you on the treatment of a headache unless I am first informed of the cause of the headache. How foolish it would be to attempt to cure the headache by a powder when all that was needed was a proper pair of spectacles!

THE PERNICIOUS DRUG-HABIT.

I was constrained to write all this because someone' wrote and asked me what drug she should take for sleeplessness. Nothing will induce me to

i'gest dragi'fotr- ithis-complaint. I have no' sympathy at all with the di-ug-habiti. Without 'any ■ recommendation' from a doctor people' buy a packet of digestive tablets, a. bottle of liver pills, a box of tonic powders, •a phial of patent corpse-revivers lo cure anything "and everything, and, last and worst; they buy a packetful of sleeping powders. Away with them all. To my dying day will I protest against this pernicious habit of buying up the. contents of- a drug-shop , and emptying them into your stomachs. At present, in this year of grace 1912, my voice is small and unheard; it is drowned by the megaphone bellowing of the cure-all merchants who roll in motor-cars while I cannot afford to get my boots soled. But my time will come! " CAUSES OF SLEEPLESSNESS. When you tell me your are sleepless 1 you tell me nothing .1 must inquire into the cause. . You are mistaken if you think a doctor has a book on his shelf giving him the name of the complaint in one column and the suitable drug in a parallel column. Our work is riot cut and dried. That is the interest of my profession.: Having heard that you are. sleepless, I try to- find out .the cause. A number of cases are explained by indigestion. Sleep may be disturbed by the presence in the 6toiriach of a mass of undigested food. THE TREATMENT. Is the treatment a sleep-powder? Go on with you I The treatment is .to recomriiend rttoderation in; the quantity of food taken—most of us eat too much—to' insist on good cooKing arid slow mastification;' to suggest that the last meal should not be taken so late in the evening; to avoid indigestible food' and strong tea; to ask the patdenit to give up coffee at night and smolce . fewer cigarettes. Sleeplessness can often be cured by attention to the digestive organs. /In other cases the .insomnia is due to an opposite cause.. Instead of the stomach being overloaded, it may be too empty. ...In such examples the eating of a biscuit is often all that is .ic?ded.