“CONSUMPTION—FACTS AND FALLACIES.”

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4539, 14 March 1922, Page 2

“CONSUMPTION—FACTS AND FALLACIES.”

Fno.w tlie author, Alfred Bernstein, M. 8., B.S.Lond., Capt. N.Z.M.0., ivc have received a copy of his latest booklet on the treatment of T.B. Dr. Bernstein has had considerable experience in consumptive sanatoria, and is recognised as one of the foremost authorities in New Zealand. Ho states that tuberculosis is the cause of one-tenth or more of the total mortality of mankind—and yet this is a preventive disease. The death-rate is slowly decreasing, but if the knowledge set forth in the above booklet were generally known there would be a rapid decrease, says the author, it is ignorance that is the cause of the waste of innumerable lives. Nearly everybody is infected, and many recover without knowing that they had been infected. Many others are •so slowly made ill that they may be infected for years before they are diagnosed—the infection so gradually overcoming the resistance. Tho tragedy of it all is that the disease is not detected early enough. I* is tho commonest of all diseases, and yet very little instruction is given to the medical students about it. If symptoms, suoh as debility, run-down, anremia, or nervous breakdown are diagnosed, and no definite cause found for them, the disease should bo suspected, and a very thorough examination made. Most cases of insidious pleurisy are tuberculous. Most people associate consumption with emaciation, fever, pain, blood-spitting, night sweats, exhaustion, copious expectoration, and hacking cough. This is a picture of tho terminal events. Every case should be detected long bofore the patient is so ill. The illness has a beginning, and the symptoms at first aro very slight. Tho author considers that all consumptives who havo received sanatorium treatment should bo propagandists. They should spread tho knowledge of the disease—how j insidious is its onset and progress, and how it can be arrested by timely and proper treatment. Chapters are devoted to the nature of the disease, symptoms, a reasons against delaying treatment, also on food, bathing, colds, recreation, early diagnosis, climate, medicines, and various other interesting topics relating to tho prevention and treatment of tuberculosis. In a reference to “colds,” tho author states that one does not catch cold from being exposod to cold. A cold is an infectious disease. If one member of a household gets a cold ho is likely to infect tho others, because ho is sneezing millions of “cold” germs into tho air, which tho others then breathb into noses and throats. Nansen, in the Diary of his explorations, describes how his party was in tho frozen Arctic for some three-years without any of his crcw having a cold (although often frost-bitfen), until one day they opened a halo of carpots. Within 24 hours all wore laid up with tho most severe cold they had over had. Tho germs had lain in the dust of the carpets. Dr. Bernstein proceeds: Often we come across people, who say they have frequent “colds” or “influenza” which they cannot throw off. In many cases they aro not colds at all—it is consumption. There is a considerable amount of information contained in this booklet, the author of which has again rendered valuable service to the community, as he had prevously done, both in his army service and 'in a public capacity,