FIGHTING THE GREAT WHITE PLAGUE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 208, 19 August 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

FIGHTING THE GREAT WHITE PLAGUE.

lIAb A CURE FOR CONSUMPTION BEEN DISCOt F.RED?

It is quite within the bounds of pos--■bility that the '.T.rJd.OOO earmarked in Mr. Lloyd George’s State Insurance Scheme .'or the building of consumption sanatoria may not be required ; for it is reported tb.at a new treatment for tiib.-reulosi.s has been discovered, on which, high hopes ara bused by distinguished men of the medical world. The man to whom credit for the new discovery is d.ue is a Budapest physician, Dr. de Sz.endetfy, wiio, as a result of exhaustive experiments and investigations, has come to the conclusion that the injection of a certair preparation of iodine will cure the majority of consumptives. The results of iii.s experiments certainly jusiify this belief, for during twelve months 80 per cent, of the patients so treated hate been practically cried, ’ilio treatment is followed <x>nsccntiveiv for thirty days and resumed after a lapse of ten days Each injection costs, roughiyv about a shilling, ind the cost of tlie whole treatment v. mild not amount to more than £5.

UTE RAA AGES OF CONSUMPTION

According to experiments- conducted not only »y Dr. de Szendcffy, but also by his distinguished colleagues—it lias been sbon n that improvement begins after the first ten days, and that after a. month the cur-* makes rapid strides. T’ho results proved beyond expectation, and Dr. fez.endeffy is certainly justified in h>s bejiei that he has at last hit upon a method of fighting a disease which Jias hicherto baffled the medical vorb.l, ami which, it is estimated, carries off annually five millions of the human raw.

Tim idea 'if curing consumption l.y injection of certain preparafions is, ol course, by no means new. The great difficulty has been to find the right sort of preparation. The first attempts t> treat tuberculosis by the injection into the body of remedies destructive to the bacillus- viz., the germs of the disease running through the blood — were made by the late Professor Koch, who inti odueed a preparation which he calle.; “ tuberculin.” But this preparation scarcely brought about the results anticipated. The Professor A’on Behring, the inventor of an antitoxin which daily sav.s oir children’s lives from the attacks of diphtheria bacillus, tried to accomplish what thousands of other doctors hod failed to do. lint did not nr'ot with the sueeess anticipated.

There was also the discovery of Dr. Liver, tin'- well-known French physician and the head of a homo for consumptives fomided at Iloubaix. who came to th'.' conclusion that the most effica: ions tro;Y moiit fur eon-umptioii consisted in the injection of a liquid composed of the extracts of nbmts found in Cliili and (ii'in»b.'i. Splendid results wore obtained from experiments with this riirc, a remark which al.-o applies to the diseo'-erv of Dr. Von Schrof ter. the eminent Professor at the University of Vienna, whoso method of treatment took the form of inhalation. He invented an inhaling apparatus by means of which the remotest parts of the lungs wore reached I>v the fumes fruaj a special therapeutic liquid.