DOCTORS DON’T KNOW

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 July 1923, Page 8

DOCTORS DON’T KNOW

MEDICAL PROBLEMS UNSOLVED Despite the great progress made in recent years by medical science there are still many mystery diseases to whose origin and prevalence doctors have been unable to discover the slightest clue, says “Titbits.” Take the prevailing epidemic of “sleepy sickness,” which has come from nobody knows where, and Is likely to go nobody knows when. A strange characteristic of this malad;/ is its preference for Jews in a mixed population, in accordance with tlie wellknown predisposition of the Jewish people to certain diseases of the nervous system. AVhy this should be so is one of the minor mysteries of medicine, as is also the fact that Jews are less liable to tuberculosis than those among whom they dwell. It has never been explained how infectious epidemics make a start without any apparent cause in localities free from infection, and io which infection has not been conveyed from outside. AVe observe instances of this in outbreaks of disease on ships at sea. Again, one of the most inexplicable things about influenza is the regular recurrence of epidemics every thirty-three weeks; nor are we certain why it is that while so many people are liard hit by it, whole families being wiped out in the worst epidemics, so many more are left scathless. That one man’s meat is another man’s poison is an old story. But no doctor can explain satisfactorily why this should be so; why such apparently innocuous foods as fresh eggs should be rank poison to some, milk i lethal draught to others, fish or strawberries a scourge to large sections of the community, the scent of roses, violets, or lily of the valley a cause of nervous collapse to thousands; and so on. AVhy cancer should develop in some people and not in others, who so far

as is known are living in the same surroundings and under identical coni ditions, come of the same stock and eat and drink of the same fare, is an unsolved problem. Medical investigators are still in the dark with regard to the real factors in the production of sex, the origin of “infant prodigies” and the appearance of genius. Prodigies confine themselves chiefly to the playing of musical instruments or the playing of chess. No one seems to know why; cor do any of the known laws of heredity ' account for such men of genius as Shakespeare, Dickens, Darwin or Pasteur. Many are the theories with regard to the causation of sleep, but so far none has proved entirely adequate to explain all the facts of the condition. Wore we acquainted with all the factors in the production of sleep we should be able to induce it by purely physiological means, at Nature does, without'the introduction of drugs. The possession of muscular strength of unusual quality is another puzzling property of the few. It is not entirely a question of the development by exercise of muscles of a certain bulk. Some men with well-devel-oped muscles of comparatively small size are the equals in strength of other men whose muscles are bulkier. But even in connection with muscular development there is much that is mysterious. Some can develop their muscles to a certain point, and tiinv citnn nnnhln to increase

[ there they stop, uname io mcreasu t further, while others of exactly the j- same build, and with no greater exs penditure of time and exercise, become the Samsons and Sandows of j their day. ! Sea-sickness is a puzzle inasmuch i as its immediate causes are concerned . because no medical man can say de- , finitely why one voyager of many in [ the same boat should be taken with ■ the most violent sickness while another is left, unaffected.