ALARM CLOCKS

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 August 1920, Page 8

ALARM CLOCKS

SIMPLE SICKS THAT MEAN PHYSICAL DECAY. NOVEL RESEARCH. St. Andrews, Scotland, celebrated among golfers in Britain, now claims iresh world-wide fame as a centre for the investigation of the primary causes of disease. Sir James .Mackenzie, the heart specialist, has lecentiy founded there an Institute of Medical Research, which he conducts on novel and enterprising lines. Ten thousand people —the population of St. Andrews —are Sir James' subjects, and the general practitioners of the town are enthusiastically cooperating with him in the work of observing the earliest signs of disease among them. Little is known of the simplest signs of ill-health, such as pain, exhaustion, or bre.ithlessness, and the object of Sir James M>"kenzie and his fellow workers is to devote intensive study to these, and discover if they indicate the beginning of grave illnesses. They are regarded as the alarm

clucks of the body, and vast possibilities of prevention and cure- are thus opened up. FEARS OF WORK. Sir James is the director of the institute. Tie has enlisted the services Qf a bacteriologist, a chemist, and a logician. He does not expect the work to come to fruition for years, since a vast amount of observation and co-ordination of results of study are entailed. St. Andrews was chosen because it is a town of small size, self-confrm-

od, and the population is not migrate ry. The cause of the symptoms in d patient can thus,be watched. The institute, through the doctors of the town, keeps in contact with each patient, and follows him during the remainder of his illness or for the duration, of his ill-health. There may be no true conception at first of the cause of a symptom detected in an individual, but as the disease develops, the medical experts ai*e able to recognise it. Similar symptoms in other patients may mean earlier detection of the disease, the principle being that the symptoms of a malady are first recognised, and then the medical experts endeavour to weed out the agents producing them. Sir James is following out on a practical basis his own die-trine that close observation and personal injury cane never be supplanted by modern instrumental methods of examination. The work of the institute has already shown that even the simplest symptoms, exhaustion, weariness, and the like, are to be found in variable degrees, each of which possesses its own importance.