INFANTILE PARALYSIS

Feilding Star, Volume 3, Issue 321, 23 July 1925, Page 2

INFANTILE PARALYSIS

VIEWED IN PERSPECTIVE. WHAT PLUNK ET SOCIETY HAS . DONE. A. scourge like infantile paralysis, which, descending unexpectedly upon the community,' lakes heavy, toll ol its members, creates alarm and honor, and rightly so, But-, severe as tho r«'

coni epidemic was, it takes a curiously difiore'llt aspect when put into perspective with other factors, which

“like tne poor, are a I way... with us." Ifc seems liarly credible, but it is a tact that the recent epidemic of infantile paralysis was responsible .for fewer deaths of children than occur annually, taking an average over soveial years, irom diseases grouped under several different headings. Among these groups are the digestive affections for early childhood; these year after year, cost the community more in actual lives lost and a disability remaining after recovery than infantile paralysis did in the recent heavv visitation.

15ut there is much less excuse tor I,hy persistence of these uon-epideniie losses. An epidemic springs up, and has to he met by an emergency organisation. It strikes the community hard, as a rule -and this scents especially the case with infantile paralysis because the generation which is afflicted lias not an, acquired resistance to its attack. But the digestive tumbles of infancy are a notable example ol non-epidemic disease, the incidence of which is not governed by jiiiv changing phase in the natural resistance- ol the community. I licy arc due chiefly to the insidious, irrestible attack of good intentions wrongly directed. I hey are due to that extent to ignorance. This ignorance is not culpable in the individual responsible; but it- is definitely culpable in the community when the facts are known, and the- comm unit,' lias been shown how the errors can be avoided and the evil results virtually abolished. -The lMunkct Society has show the way. Whether we like it or not the work of the I’lunket Society )kh convicted us, as a community, of being accessory to manslaughter on a wholesale scale. It is an appalling responsibility, and the sooner the people of New Zealand unburden themselves ol it the easier theii consciences will be.—-Xew Zealand limes.