DIET AND APPENDICITIS

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 October 1939, Page 3

DIET AND APPENDICITIS

MEDICAL MAN’S RESEARCHES. “Appendicitis appears to be much more common in those sections of the Bantu population living on European diet than in those living on the rdw native diet,” concludes Dr. J. F. P. Erasmus, of the department of surgery of the University of Witwatersrand, in an article on “The Incidence of Appendicitis in the Bantu,” published in the South African Medical Journal. i Considerable importance is given by the profession to Dr. Erasmus’s research, as it may help to clear up tlie cause of appendicitis-

Dr. Erasmus has studied the statistics dealing with the incidence of appendicitis among Europeans, natives, and coloured people in all the hospitals of the Union, but more particularly with reference to those in Johannesburg hospitals. He says that in the past a large body of opinion has held that meat eating plays a large part in the incidence of appendicitis, but he points out that this could not have been responsible for the amazing increase in the number of cases seen since 1895 in the Western civilised races.

There were millions of people in England and Germany, France, America, and other parts of the world eating as much meat as is generally consumed to-day. In 1918 the civilian populations of England and Western and Central Europe could get but little meat, and yet the incidence of appendicitis did not fall in these countries.

“It seems that meat can be exonerated from blame as a cause of appendicitis, or at least as a major cause,” he writes. “Lack of fibre in modern diet seems to play a much more important role.” Di'. Erasmus points out that the staple article of diet of the Bantu is porridge made of coarse home-ground maize or kaffir corn, bur. when he comes to the town he tries to imitate the deit'ary of the European, showing a partiality for meat and discarding the rough meal for a finer meal. There appears also an averseness to green vegetables. “All that can be justifiably said from the facts 1 have collected’ is that it seems that appendicitis is more common in subjects on a European diet, but does occur in those living on the raw native diet,” he says. “Again, if the diet is in truth an important factor in the etialogy of the disease, one would expect appendicitis to be much more common in town-dwelling natives than it appears to be. One would at least expect some evidence to show that it is becoming more common, but the figures of the Johannesburg hospitals show no obvious increase during the nine-year period 192!) to 1937.”

Here are some of Dr. Erasmus's tentative conclusions: —

In the Johannesburg hospitals appendicitis is about eight times as common in Europeans as in the Bantu. The percentage of complicated cases is considerably higher in the Bantu.

The percentage of mortality in Ihe Bantu is much higher than in Europeans, and it is suggested' that this may be from low initial resistance, the relative inefficiency of early localising of diffusing peritonitis, and relatively’ low resistance to protracted sepsis. Appendicitis is relatively rare in the Bantu below the age of 1-1.