MEDICAL NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9455, 10 March 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

MEDICAL NOTES.

General debility is nob a , disease, but simply a state of weakness. It is a condition of lowered vitality; all the organs may be healthy, bub deficient in power. Anything that lowers the vitality of the body, will cause it, as the constant, use of intoxicating drinks, tobacco, strong tea or coffee and drugs. Neglect of the rules of health will be favourable to its appearance, such as late hours, want of rest or sleep, neglect of exercise, bad air, &c. Anything that causes a drain on the system will cause ib, as frequent or long-continued nose-bleeding. Wrong foods or too many meals may also give rise to it. • Excessivo bodily exertion, or much mental worry may also bring it on. General debility may follow any fever or any other acute c. chronic disease; or ib may be symptom in some disease, as in consumption, bloodlessneas, heart disease. The symptoms are varied. There is lack of energy or strength ; the person is easily tired, any bub the gentlest exercise is followed by feelings of exhaustion. To walk up stairs is too much for many sufferers. The mental faculties are also below the normal ; anything that requires a little thought is too great exertion for the patient. Arguments and reasonings cannot be followed, nor does the patient devote Jiimself to any studies; he finds all too great for his strength. The pulee may be quick and weak ; and perspiration may quickly follow any little exertion. "Sinkings" in the stomach may follow meals, or be felt between meals, as the digestive organs are weakened as well as the other organs. Foods which can be eaten with comfort when in health are found to disagree with thedebilitated, and wind in the stomach is often a distressing symptom. The face may be pale and the cheeks sunken. The body may be thin ; but stout persons are not free from debility. The hands and feet may be cold during the day, and the feet so cold at night as to prevent sleep. There is occasionally swelling of the legs and feet towards night, and the swelling usually goes away during the night. Cramp in the legs, feet, hands, &c., are nob uncommon ; and starting in sleep is nob uncommon. To get the debilitated well we must forbid the use of such injurious things as tobacco, intoxicants, tea, coffee, and drugs. Gentle exercise must be taken twice a day according to the strength ; windows must be kept open night and day according to the weather; unventi\ated places must be avoided; late hours must be given up, and eight hours must be spent in bed. Excessive mental or bodily exertion musb be discontinued ; the loss of blood must be stopped. Patients suffering from debility due to disease must be cured of it, and the debility will then cease. So-called tonics will do harm, but no good. Simple food, regularity of life, and abstinence from injurious things, will quickest lead to energy and health. DANGERS OF SELF-DRUGGING. That extremely useful committee of the British Medical Association, the Thera-

peutic Committee, has (says the Hospital) just issued its special reporb of an inquiry instituted to bring out and define the dangers said to be associated with certain drugs largely used by the members of the public on then' own initiative. The chief of these drugs is antipyrin, one of the favourite remedies of the modern victims of neuralgia. The investigation has formally established the fact that in medical hands antipyiin i 3 often an excellent remedy for neuralgic pains; it has also proved definitely that the following results have sometimes ensued upon the use of the drug, even in skilled hands; and that, therefore, those non-medical persons who use it on their own responsibility incur risks and dangers of an exceedingly serious kind. The dangerous symptoms noted theadministra tion of ordinary doses have been, among others, "Alarming depression, excessive sweating and partial collapse, vasomotor pains and lividity, a condition of mania, dizziness an J. loss of power in the legs, alarming: faintness, loss of speech lasting twenty-four hours, cardiac weakness and irregularity, cyanosis, dyspnoea, with much nervous excitement, collapse, and death." This is a considerable list of dangerous results from the use of one single drug, bub it is by no means exhaustive. Those who have been in the habit of baking anti pyrin without submitting themselves to the watchful care of the skilled medical attendant, "should certainly now hold their hands. Even medical men, after the publication of this report, will feel that the drug is an edged tool of a decidedly dangerous character, and musb be employed with a caution hitherto considered unnecessary.

THE HEALTH OF THE SKIN, The health of the skin, in nine cases out of ten (writes Dr. Gordon Stables), means the health of the individual. Yet how few remember that we have a skin within, and that the health of the mucous membranej or inner skin, which lines the lips, the lungs, and the whole digestive canal, depends to a very large extent on the health of the skin without. We strengthen the mucous membrane in one way, by always breathing fresh air. Therefore, even at night, the bedroom should be judiciously and scientifically ventilated. But there is no occasion to sleep in a draught. Then by day we should remember that pure air is as necessary as good food, and not only be now and then in the open, bub whenever we can, and as long as we can. Though our boots be strong, they* ought nob to be boo heavy, and neither ought our clothes be so. All should be soft, warm, and light. lb is then a pleasure to move around and exercise does one good, so that the skin is nob only strengthened but rendered pliant and supple, and thus every pore can do its duty. Then we have the benefits of water to fall back upon for the skin. We have (1) the delightfully exhilarating morning tub, followed by the application of rough towels, snd probably a go-over with the Crutchloe massage rubber ; or, the Saturday night's warm bath; (3) the fortnightly Turkish bath. Attention to these simple hints would make aman of many a one who perhaps never knew what ib was to live, but merely to exist. HEREDITARY DISEASE

We know that features, form, frame, peculiarity of constitution, susceptibility to certain agents, not to speak of character, mental and moral, the passions and the intellect, are often derived from progenitors many steps upwards in the ancestral tree. Individually we are combinations of many ancestors. The actual traits of the parents may or may not be seen in their offspring, and ib is more common to find that one or two only are represented in each child. The remainder are doubtless derived from

some ancestor long forgotten, whose intellectual powers or defects, infirmities or vigour of body, whose faults and follies, whose brilliant powers or miserable failings, may be reflected in a remote descendant, as he himself has derived them from some distant ancestor. . We are accustomed to say that gout; may skip a generation, and why may not it skip four or five ? Hereditary tendency is probably of far more remote origin than is commonly supposed, and ia a reflection of the tendencies of untold numbers who have preceded us in the family tree. It is a frightful thing thus to look back on the sins of our forefathers and to recognise the transmitted punishment, but ib is in accordance with other facts of moral origin and highest dictation. It is sometimes asserted that when people live together, or are intimately associated, they grow like each other, and we know that schoolboys are apt to catch any peculiarity of habit or expression of their tutor or schoolmaster. This is undoubtedly the [ case, bub ib is a very different) thing from ; heredity. Physical peculiarities acquired accidentally are not transmitted. A man loses a leg, .but his children are born with their proper complement. '.For generations past ib has bean customary to cub off the ears and tails of certain breeds of dogs, bub ib has nob resulted in the establishment of a race of animals undisturbed with these useful appendages. On the other hand, when by a curious freak of Nature a man is born with a supernumerary finger or toe, he may transmit .-this peculiarity to his children. It sometimes happens thib children of one sex exhibit an hereditary taint, whilsb those of the opposite sex escape iib. ; The boys "take after" the father and the girls after the mother, and a tendency to disease may be more or less powerful as the child resembles one or other parent,—Family Physician.