TALKS ON HEALTH

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 February 1934, Page 3

TALKS ON HEALTH

THE HEALTH FADDIST. (By a Family Doctor.) In most circumstances of life we find three courses open to us: we can do too much or too little, or just the right amount. In money matters we can spend too much when we are guilty or extravagance, or too little when we become misers, or we can regulate by the rules of common sense and prudence the amount that should be spent and the amount that should be saved. In matters of health the same three courses can be followed. We are all familiar with the man who pays too much attention to health. He becomes a faddist. He dare not sit down to breakfast without a pair of scales to weigh out his food. He is always buying patent forms of nutriment specially adapted for nerve building, or vital energy formation, or brain production. LOOKING FOR TROUBLE,

He is full of theories, and can prove that cabbage causes cancer, because he had an old lady friend who grew cabbages in her garden and died ot cancer. He can never forget he has a body and just go about his business; he is always watching for slight aches and pains, and is quite disappointed if none appear. He pores over medical books, and always believes that he has the last disease he has read about. His complaints weary his family, and the friends he meets are bored to death with his long-winded descriptions of his imaginary complaints. His children make up their minds they will never pay any attention to their health ?,t all rather than be like father. These valetudinarians succeed in brinuging discomfort and annoyance to themselves and all about them. NEGLECT OF HEALTH. Examples of the opposite fault neglect of health will come readily to the mind. Our attempts to root out consumption are baffled because the disease is allowed firmly to entrench itself before help and advice are sought. Parents think so little about health that they do not bother to warn their boys of eighteen years of the risks they run. Workmen are notoriously careless in adopting safeguards against accidents. Guards for circular saws are left on the ground instead of being fixed in their proper place; everywhere workers do not wear their protective spectacles they just trust to luck that their eyes will escape the danger, with disastrous results. Young ladies wear flimsy garments in a cold wind. They spend a pound on a hat instead of on a good pair of boots to keep the wet out. DOCTOR’S ORDERS. Well, what am I to do with you all? I am a poor, harmless old hack, plodding along the road of life, trying to be content if I can fire one or two shots that hit the body of the demon of disease and make him jump. I have to try to sum up each individual. To this one I administer a rebuke, and tell him to forget he has a body, and never consult a doctor or a medical book again, and he will be all right. I To that one I have to say, : “My dear sir, you must think a great deal more about your health or you will be in a bad way.” ANNUAL OVERHAULING.

I have always preached that there should be an annual overhauling. It you buy a house you carry out periodical inspections and. all necessary repairs as a matter of course. A new washer is put on the scullery tap; the wallpaper is renewed and the damp spot attended to. It is common sense. But will a builder have the dwellingplace of his'soul inspected and repaired? Not he! He ought to have [pur teeth stopped , his right ear syringed, his constipation cured, Ins glasses altered, the ulcer on his leg healed, his loss of weight investigated. But no, the same old happy-go-lucky plan of letting the house fall into complete disrepair until it falls down is the time-honoured method. Slowly but painfully we must try to raise the standard of education and the growth of intelligence, and' we must pray tor the time when there will be neither health-cranks nor food-faddists and no reckless neglect of the rules of hygiene. I shall be dead when that day comes.

THE “TOO-LATE” PATIENT. . The most unsatisfactory patient, from the doctor’s point of view, is the “too-late” patient—the man or woman who ought to -have walked into the consulting room six months or even a year ago, but never could scrape up Che courage.. I wonder if you will ever escape from the dread of going to a doctor. Poor old Dr. Brown, with the round face and the bald head', sitting sipping his tea and nibbling his toast —who would have thought that he was a man to be afraid of? And yet, you know, the woman with a small growth in her breast would not go and see him because she was too frightened. Well, we doctors must try and convince the timorous ones that we are not sue.a terrible men after all. I know this, it is impossible to go through a doctor s training at a hospital without acquiring a deep sympathy for suffering humanity.. Many an illness or suigical complaint remains curable for many weeks, but reaches a point beyond which cure is impossible.

UNSATISFACTORY PATIENTS. Another type of person who gives us much annoyance is the one with a little knowledge; he presumes too much and thinks he knows everything His daughter has a cough, and he procures for her an infallible mixture and makes her take twelve bottles of it, not knowing that the cough is the beginning of consumption and needs quite different treatment. Then there is the man we described as a bad patient. By a bad patient we mean a man who fails to act on the doctor’s advice, and who blames the poor gentleman because the symptoms persist. It is often our duty to set a man a self-denying task. The gourmand must not eat so much, the drinker must exercise restraint, the bookworm must go for a tramp in the country, the bad-tempered' woman must cultivate repose—all these tasks can be given to the patient, and' he must work out his own salvation; the doctor cannot do everything.