DECLINE IN PARALYSES

Gisborne Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 9669, 16 April 1923, Page 2

DECLINE IN PARALYSES

NEW REMEDY FOUND

MALARIAL INOCULATION

Professor Robertson, presenting his annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, discussed a remarkable change in the number of deaths from paralysis. “The most serious malady that we treat fn mental hospitals is general paralysis,” Dr Robertson said, “and during the last 10 years keen interest lias been taken in the search for a remedy. The latest remedy is the inoculation of the patient with tertian malaria. It is known that the presence of one malady sometimes lias the effect of checking another, and it is asserted from Vienna that remarkable results have been obtained in general paralysis when the patient has been infected with malaria. The statements made are so positive that this • method of treatment must be tested. Giving the patient any chance of recovery, however small, is better than doing nothing. “It is a dramatic and paradoxical occurrence . that this disease, which has defied all our combined efforts to treat it, should have suddenly , decreased, judging by the number of deaths, in the most mysterious way. No satisfactory explanation has yet been forthcoming to account for it.”