MEDICAL NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10515, 7 August 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

MEDICAL NOTES.

"WASHERWOMAN'S HAND. ,, There is hardly a more intractable disease than chronic rheumatism. Year after year, with now and then an interval of relief, it goes on nob directly shortening one days, but nob eeldom making ita victim wish them shortened. There may be a possibility of a permanent! care, bat prevention is not far better than cure, bub is more practicable, because, in most cases, nothing more is necessary than to avoid exposure which may bo avoided. The joints are the usual points of attack—sometimes those of the ankle, sometimes those of the knee, the shoulder, the wrist, or the lingers. The attacks, however, are not at random: they are aimed at those joints which are overworked. For this reason, they often attack the wrist and fingers of washerwomen, the tendency thither being greatly increased by the violent changes of temperature to which these parts are subjected, and that, too, at a time when the whole body is heated by exercise, and when, therefore, the joints are in a specially susceptible atate. Mot only do these joints become exceedingly painful, and thus interfere with needed sleep, bat tho hand at length becomes deformed. The disease is a great affliction in the case of professional washerwomen ; for the bread of their children, and too often that of a lazy and drunken husband, depends on their work. Bub a great number of other women are exposed to it. We have now chiefly in mind the tens of thousands of heads of families who are liable to bring this affliction on themselves. They do their own washing, and do it, necessarily, in addition to their other work. These energetic but excessively imprudent women on washing-day rush from hob to cold and from cold to hot, withoub a thought of barm. They go with irritated joints and open pores from the steaming washtub to the ice-cold clothes-line. Coming back to the kitchen,- they scrub the floor, and hasten the dinner over the cooking stove, Iβ it a wonder that multitudes of our choicest wives and mothers suffer from what, the doctors Call " the washerwoman's hand?" Our necessary ailments are numerous enough, without adding to them a painful and deforming trouble, which can be avoided with due care.