HEALTH NOTES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 16 May 1928, Page 4

HEALTH NOTES.

PERIODIC EXAMINATIONS. . “PREVENTION IS BETTER. THAN CURE.” (Contributed by the Department of Health.) . In urging the necessity for a periodic physical examination frequent use has beefi made of the comparison between the human body and a machine. The automobile particularly has been pressed into service to convey the idea that the human mechanism, too, would profit by an overhaul at regular intervals. Periodic physical examination lias been recommended for many years; the original suggestion, in fact, seems to have been made more than half a century ago. but only within comparatively recent years has the movement received such impetus as to make it a real arid important factor in the physical welfare of a nation. The reasons why health examinations are beneficial are so obvious that hardly any arguments lor them are necessary. " They are, of course, advantageous to the individual in that they serve to detect the beginning of organic disease, or to discover the existence of "definite physical impairments of which tho person may have been unaware. Faulty personal habits of living, errors of hygiene, and possible shortcomings in environmental conditions are frequently brought out. For instance, the opportunity of completely reviewing the physical condition of recruits by military boards in New Zealand during the Great War revealed the value and necessity of such examinations. in many of the employments, as classified, 70 per cent., and even in ■some cases up to 00 per cent., of the recruits were rejected from class A owing to certain disabilities and diseases, and these were men in the prime of life. The system of medical inspection of school children affords another striking illustration of the value of tho early detection of physical deformities and disease. In this case the examination also serves as. a guide for parents in the selection, of suitable employment for children with known cerects. PERSONAL HYGIENE. As an authority lias pointed out, there is still more potent reason why the health examination movement is one of the nearest steps to public health. It is because public health has reached a stage of development where personal hygiene is getting to lie more important than the control ol one’s surroundings, including in that term both inanimate objects and other human beings. As the public health movement has progressed, sanitary science has triumphed over environmental conditions, and, broadly speaking, over many or the communicaole diseases. The sanitary engineering phase of public health in which pure water supplies, effective methods of sewerage disposal, sanitary production of milK, eradication of in-sect-borne diseases, improvement in housing, and similar engineering lunations, so highly developed, has reached a point where now it is often a matter of routine. Of course, much yet remains to be accomplished. However, the seed has been sown anil cultivated, the plant well nourished, with here and there a barren spot perhaps. Such diseases as typhoid fever are definitely on the wane. The death knell has been sounded lor hookworm, malaria, and yellow fever; diphtheria is being conquered; man has vanquished smallpox, though this insidious foe is ever watchful for the time when carelessness, apathy, and ignorance release it to ravage again. The venereal diseases have been recognised as health enemies as well as moral ones. Tuberculosis is losing in its fight on human existence. Infant mortality is also succumbing. As these diseases and their death rates go down, others rise to take their place. Canter, kidney diseases, heart trouble, diabetes, apoplexy, and other organic diseases seem to be on the increase. The death rates irom them are either rising or the trend is stationary or only slightly downward. The secret in combating these maladies in every ease is an early diagnosis. For that matter diagnosis at the very onset is important m checking any disease, and applies with special emphasis to many ol those, which have been previously mentioned, such as tuberculosis. Tho average span of life in New Zealand is increasing, but it would iorge ahead much faster it the present knowledge regarding communicable diseases vvas universally applied. It will increase even more when the rules ol personal hygiene are thoroughly employed. In the meantime, and for all time, health examinations have a real • place in the advancement el our national vitality.

TAivKN IN Tli'uT. is lho periodic health cxantiua--11011? By a peiiodic health cxauiiuation wo menu the use ol ;til those resources of a physician, by question, observation, amt tests, through the’ application of which Ire distinguishes between health and disease, wnen applied to persons who, so iar as they are aware, are not suflcring from any disability or disease. Tno physician is laced with a client, a pupil seeking guidance in health, rather than sought by a patient who believes himself to he sick. The health client comes to learn whether in Jiiis luippy disregard of minor discomforts, or shall we say while inattentive to slowly-devc.oping and insidipus disease, he is as well as ho is capable o, being, and by a better adjustment to his fellows and to liis physical surroundinga, and to the obligations to his work and family, lie may escape the too rapid advance of the infirmities of his years and correct the habits at fifty which may have been safe and useful at thirty. When peoule are subjectively aware of disease, the time lias usually passed for the most hopeful and effective curative or corrective treatment. Only by detecting tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer of tongue or up, diabetes in the earliest stage, even when the patient is wholly satisfied with his apparent btate of health, can we most nearly approximate cure by the use of medical sciences.

Enough has uecii indicated to stress the importance of a periodic, physical examination of the human machine by the family dietor, move especially so from . the age of 10 years upwards, when the diseases mentioned often have their onset, i’of the protection of workers in what arc known as dangerous trades, in certain cases such examinations are compulsory by law. It is realised in those trades from experience that prevention is bettor than cure, and the profound wisdom of this old maxim equally applies to all walks of life. However, one should not be unduly and morbidly solicitous about one’s health and drift ingloriously into the Tanks of the valetudinarians, a class *o abhorred, according to Boswell, by Samuel Johnson. Yet at the ■same time, though death is a neces-

sary and inevitable end. it behoves all i individuals to avail themselves of every I means to prolong existence at least to j three score years and ten, and one of | the most important means to this end is an occasional overhaul by a qualified physician skilled by experience' and ! training in the early signs of the ills 1 that flesh is heir to. ,