FIGHTING DISEASE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 29 August 1924, Page 3

FIGHTING DISEASE.

ARE WE TOO CARELESS? I often wonder if you good people would avail yourselves of a cure of cancer if it were discovered to-morrow (writes ail English medical correspond? ent). As the years pass by yon seem to be suffering from the same old complaints brought on in the same old way by the same old faults. M.v impression of you all is that you would continue to suffer from cancer years after its cure or its prevention was discovered. Take the other great scourge —venereal disease.

Do I know how to prevent it? I do. Have I explained how to prevent it? 1 have. Does the great British public avail itself of the knowledge? It does not. Will it ever? No. -Do 1 know how to prevent consumption? Yes, by fresh air, good food, careful lives, parental care, sound hygiene, and asking the co-operation of nurse and doctor. Does the British public interest itself in these subjects? No. Is consumption still far too common? It is. If the British public are careless and indifferent about these two great curses would they be equally indifferent about cancer? They wouid. Am 1 losing faith in the common sense of the British public? I am; hut I hate to confess it. There are a few —a very few — brave souls who make a plucky struggle against the disease; but the main mass of people take nothing like the interest in health that they take in football or horse-racing. I wander through my old wards and see the same type of patient that I saw a. quarter of a century ago. Appendicitis, preventible; gastric ulcers, all preventible; hereditary blindness, always preventible. Oh, dear! It takes some effort to keen one’s courage UPThe smallest ulcers on the tongue, which may occur in large numbers, and are quite shallow, are due to indigestion. They often occur on the lips as well as on the tongue, and they should be treated by using frequently a simple mouth-wash of boracic or Aerv weal; carbolic acid, and by treating the disease of the stomach by a suitable diet and a dose of salts. An ulcer may be found at the side of the tongue, lying immediately against the sharp, ragged edge of a decayed tooth. This variety of ulcer will never heal until the tooth is removed, and if this simple precaution is neglected, the long-continued irritation of the sharp tooth may result in the formation of a cancer on the site of the ulcer. The general condition of the mouth may give rise to an ulcerated tongue. Some people do not recognise the importance of keeping the mouth clean, and if there are a couple of dozen septic teeth in the mouth, the poor old tongue gets involved in the trouble, aml the ulcer that forms is verv painful. If people are suffering from consumption, ulcers of a tuberculous nature may appear on the tongue. Easily, the tongue is a common place for cancer. It is far more frequently found in men than in women, and in some cases the irritation of a clay pipe has been thought to be the cause of tbe growth.