TALKS ON HEALTH

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 June 1940, Page 10

TALKS ON HEALTH

PREVENT INFECTION.

(By a Family Doctor).

If a case of infectious disease occurs in your house it is your bounden duty to do all you can to prevent the spread of infection. So far as lies in your power, keep the patient isolated. Do not let the other children play near him. Do not kiss the patient “good-night,” and then go into the other room to kiss the other children; kissing is a splendid way to carry germs. Spoons and plates should be set aside for sole use in the sickroom. A spoon, carelessly washed, may easily be the means of carrying disease. So no kissing and no spooning. Handkerchiefs, pillow-cases, and all personal garments must be washed alone, apart from the other household washing. The patient’s washing may be put to soak in a zinc bath containing water to which some, antiseptic has been added. When father goes off to work in the morning, he ought not to go into the sick room first. He ought to shout “good-bye” through the door. He may throw precaution to the winds, enter the room, get covered with germs, go downstairs and put his overcoat on, arrive at the office, cast off his overcoat and scatter the infection all over his typist. Such a course is very unkind to others, and I must put you on your honour to do all you can to protect your comrades in the office or workshop. May I remind you that fresh air is an excellent preventive against infection? Fresh air in the house, fresh air in the sick-room, fresh air in your lungs. Send the other children out to play; if it is sunny give them their lunch and let them play in the park all day. Open the windows of the sick-room as wide as they will go.

IN CASES OF FEVER. During a feverish illness We skin gets clammy and uncomfortable, and a tired and exhausted patient is very grateful to a nurse who will give him a wash all over. The warm sponging will often induce sleep better than any sleeping draught. Before you begin to uncover the patient get everything ready. You must not expose your patient and then find you have forgotten the soap and run into Mrs. Brown’s next door while the patient gets pneumonia. Think what you will want first—clean nightgown, towels, sponge, hot water in the kettle and cold water to add to it, etc, A little mild disinfectant in the water is very pleasant.' The face and neck can be washed before the body is uncovered. Then do the two arms, under the armpits, and all over the chest. Work quickly, and dry the skin with a warm towel. Then turn the patieni on his side and do his back. This is very important, especially with, old, thin or very feeble patients. The back must never be allowed to gel sore over the bones. Watch very carefully for the first sign of soreness. Dry the back well and put on some powder. Put on the clean nightgown to cover arms and chest, lay e light shawl over the chest. Now finish off the legs, doing the work thoroughly. Now give him a clear handkerchief with just a touch oi scent on it, and brush his hair. And if he does not say, “Ah, that’s nice!” and fall into a peaceful slumber, call me a Quack. ' SMALLPOX.

It is very satisfactory that there are fewer cases of smallpox to-day than there were many years ago. Cases of smallpox are generally found at the docks, where the disease has been brought from overseas. Scarlet fever is still with us; diphtheria is common; measles and chicken-pox are everyday occurrences; typhoid fever is still rife. Strange to say, of all the infectious diseases, small-pox is the only one to be dying out. I wonder why it is that diphtheria is not the one to disappear, and small-pox the one to stay with us? Why does scarlet fever still annoy us, while small-pox retreats before our attacks? All these diseases are like so many skittles in a row," and we try to bowl them over by every means at our disposal; all the other skittles remain defiantly standing up; it is only the small-pox skittle that is wobbling. There must be something very funny about it. It is certainly mysterious.

» THE REASON. Education, sanitation, drainage, improved housing, destruction of slums—all these measures we have had, and they have doubtless done much to destroy disease. But these measures apply to all diseases. Why should small-pox be the one and only disease to give way, while all the others remain rampant? There must be some reason, and we find it in the protection afforded by vaccination. I know there has been much ink spilt over this controversy, but the fair-minded man will always be struck by this fact: that where vaccination is usual, there small-pox has been almost defeated, and the other diseases, for which there is no vaccination, remain with us. Anyway, it is a very grave responsibility to allow a crop of unvaccinated subjects to grow up in a crowded town where dirt and crowding would give every chance for an epidemic to spread when once it had started.

A DANGER SIGNAL. Fain may be useful, though unpleasant. Pain is a danger signal, informing the patient that something is wrong. Never neglect or despise pain. In those diseases when pain is not a strong feature the patient is in danger of neglecting the symptoms. In pleurisy the pain is sudden and acute, and the sufferer is made only too well aware that there is an inflammation in his side; he goes to bed or seeks advice at once. Put in typhoid fever there is not much pain in the first few days, and a man may work with the fever on him. This exposes him to great danger. In cancer, too, it is a most unfortunate thing that the early stages are painiess; silently and ' secretly the tumour grows, and even if the patient feels the lump he thinks nothing of it, as it is not painful. If every cancer were , painful from the very onset there would be fewer deaths from this dreadful scourge. IMAGINARY PAINS. But pain is often a mysterious symptom, and although I have counselled you not to neglect pain I do not forget that some pains are imaginary and the best thing to do is I

to ignore and neglect them. A pain may exist not as an indication of some tumour or definite inflammation, but as an isolated phenomenon of a nervous or imaginary nature. Some people expect a pain, look for a pain, almost hope for a pain, and then sure enough it comes, and they go round to a neighbour to get some sympathy. Such pains are accentuated when the patient sits down doing nothing, and are forgotten if his attention is occupied with something of interest. A pain in a girl’s back may be too bad to allow her to work, but not bad enough to prevent her from going to a dance.