TALKS ON HEALTH

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 March 1933, Page 3

TALKS ON HEALTH

Anaemia—A Common Complaint:

[by a family DOCTOR]

Anaemia is one of the commonest of complaints, and there is more ignorance about its euro than on any other medical subject. You may remember that the blood consists of a pale liquid in which float, tiny red discs. These discs serve the purpose of conveying the fresh air from the lungs to all parts of the body. In anaemia there are too few of these discs, and they are too pale in colour. The commonest symptom of anaemia is breathlessness; the blood cannot aerate the body properly when the, discs are so few. Puffing and blowing at the top of the stairs is the consequence. The heart, and the lungs work in unison; both the heart and the lungs are disturbed in anaemia. A pain in the back is also commonly felt. This is due to the weakness of the large muscles of the back. It has nothing whatever to do with the kdneys, and is so often said. Pain, in the back is very, very seldom a sign of kidney disease. The brain is not. supplied with a rich quantity of blood as it ought, to he, and fainting is the consequence. An.aejnia. is far commoner in the female sex than in the male. Any irregularities should not be treated as such. The anaemia should be treated first, and the irregularities will look after themselves.

The Worship of Medicine:

Now for the words of wisdom which none of you will take to heart. The treatment of anaemia is good food and fresh air. You will never believe that. You must and will have something out of a. bottle, or die in the miserable attempt. The Israelites of old worshipped a golden calf, some today worship money, others worship tlicir stomachs, hut you people worship bottles of medicine. You thoroughly despise the gift's of God —no good food for us, thank you; a cup of stewed tea and some bleached flour is all the food we want. “Oh, no, sir,” the modern "mother says to me, “she don’t, eat enough to keep a canary, but then I give her lots of pills, and I can’t understand why she is ill.” I wish 1 could kill once and for all that ignorant trust you all have in a box of pills.

Things You Did Not Know:

Now for some more words of wisdom, which you will trample under foot. There are all the drugs you need in good food. .Is it iron you want? There is iron in bread, iron in meat, iron in gravy, iron in green vegetables. You never knew that. You thought the Creator had made a, terrible mistake and forgotten to put. blood-making materials in good food. And so you toddle off to the chemist’s shop to buy some chemicals to make good the deficiency. Is it phosphates you want? There are phosphates in milk, phosphates in meat, phosphates in potatoes, and, indeed, in every mouthful of food you have ever taken you have taken in phosphates. What a pity you will not try to learn something useful! If only you had known, or been taught at school, that all the essentials for building up good blood are to bb found in food, including iron and phosphates. I will give you another useful piece of knowledge. The water secreted by the kidneys contains a lot of salts besides the pure water. If you take a teaspopnful of phosphates they are thrown out of the body by the kidneys as useless.

Too Much Iron:

Constipation is always associated with anaemia. It is present as part of the disease, and you make it ten times worse by taking an over-dose of iron, which is very constipating. Then, having filled yourself up with iron, you have to take an enormous dose of some aperient to correct the effect of tho iron, and so your inside, which was built to absorb good food, becomes a chemist's shop of drugs. The constipating iron, washed down with stewed tea and acid pickles, have a battle royal with the salts and senna that were washed down with ginger beer and cucumber.

A Mistaken Idea:

It is well known that anaemic girls do not drink enough liquid-; all they drink is tea. They ought to drink four large tumblerfuls of water a. day. The body is more than half water. A large quantity of water is needed to make blood. Blood is a liquid, and the water in the blood is its most important constituent. I said “water,” not beer, or ale, or port. It is a curious -uiig that red wines are always recommended for anaemia. I am afraid it is through the mistaken idea that. the red of the wine will make the red of the blood. Of course, the red colouring matter of the wine is not a' bit like the red colouring matter of the blood. Those Teeth: if you were a doctor at a hospital, and in the course of a month had to examine one hundred people suffering from anaemia, you would find that eighty of them had bad teeth. So often does one find anaemia and bad teeth associated in the same person that it must be more than a coincidence. I have cured a. good many cases of anaemia by recommending attention to the teeth. It may be unpleasant to go to the dentist; but it is far more unpleasant to be ill for months. It may bo expensive to go to the dentist, but it is far more expensive to ‘lose your job through illhealth. Deai‘ old mother goes to market and buys good food, and she comes home and cooks it, and then her anaemic daughter swallows it in lumps because she has no sound teeth to masticate with. Good food swallowed in lumps is poison, it lies in the stomach and ferments, and gives rise to wind and catarrh.

Weather and Temperament: The weather does affect the health, of course, but every kind of weather has its compensations. I am all for sunshine and plenty of it. But there is no doubt that, hot, dry, dusty summers promote those diseases that are carried by dust, 'rhe diarrhoea and vomiting that carries off so many children in the dog days is an unknown disease during a wet, cold summer. The rain washes down all the back alleys and flushes the drains. Not many of us are Ikely to suffer from heat-stroke or exhaustion, fam afraid catarrhs and colds are more prevalent. Meanwhile, you must clothe yourselves according to the thermometer and not according to the calendar.