MEDICAL NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10972, 28 January 1899, Page 5 (Supplement)

MEDICAL NOTES.

HOW TO CURE INDIGESTION.

In an article under this title in The Young Woman, Dr. Andrew Wilson says;—" The 'meat tea' or 'high tea' is the meal I should like to see abolished from the British dietetic list. It is an utterly

unpbysiological combination. Tea and coffee taken along with meat will arrest digestion, and I am certain that many cases of digestive trouble are to be traced to the habit of taking these beverages at dinner as part of a solid meal. The justification of tea or coffee as breakfast beverages is found in the fact that fish and salt foods (such as ham) are not so markedly affected by these fluids as is the butcher meat, the chop and the steak, and sc on, of the 'high tea.' This latter form of meal is a physiological mistake, and should be abolished as an unhygienic habit. Good teeth represent an absolutely essential condition for good digestion. Bad teeth, conversely, are a frequent cause of indigestion. Think for a moment of the duties !of the teeth. They are intended to break j down the food, so that the stomach will

readily act upon the divided nutriment. Now, if for any reason— painful or defective teeth— bolt our food, we load the stomach with masses far too large for its easy digestion. If our teeth are deficient, it is a moral duty to go to the dentist, because it is a moral duty to preserve our health. Nature did not give us 32 hard things inside our mouths without intending that we should use them. We should see an immense improvement in national health if tea and coffee, which are not foods, could be replaced by the use of cocoa, which is a true food, and a nutritious and cheap one to boot. This tea and coffee question is a more important one than many of us arc apt to imagine. If, as I have said, tea and coffee are not foods, we may well consider the waste of money, and the waste of nutritive power besides, which are represented in the common dietetic habits of the people who consume these beverages under the idea that they are foods. They cost relatively more than cocoa, which contains starch, fat, gluteu, ami nitrogenous '.natter, and is therefore a combination of foods, comparable, in a way, to milk itself. The masses, who have ] not too much money to spend on foods, would experience an amazing increase in working power and health, if cocoa were substituted for the tea and coffee which they consume at all hours of the day, and which are only provocative of digestive troubles when taken so frcoly, and without any consideration of their food value at all. Nutrition lies at the root of all success in national as well as personal success—and I say the substitution of cocoa for tea would mean a vast improvement in our national health, and therefore an increase of happiness all round."

OBSTRUCTION OF THE BOWELS. Tins ailment is always serious, and causes many deaths overy year; it must not be looked upon as a disease of itself, for it is only a symptom or sign that there is some disease present in the abdomen, or else that some injury has taken place there. Obstruction is generally shown by abdominal pain, with sickness, retching and vomiting, accompanying the complete stoppage. Constipation may come on gradually, and so lead to an tire stoppage, or the result may be sudden and unexpected. If a person is known to have a rupture, any obstruction must be attended to at once, for delay may quickly end In mortification and early death. Obstruction following gradually-increasing constipation is most common in very aged persons who are more or less bed-ridden. The majority of cases are due to diseases of the intestines themselves. Cancer, sarcoma, and other forms of tumour may grow on and in the coats of the gut, and may block up the passage through it. Ulcers of the intestines may, after healing, lead to scare, which contract, just as the scars of burns on the skin often contract, and so the gut may get blocked. There is one very peculiar form of stoppage, seen mostly in children; this is due to a passing of ono part of the intestines into the part near it, just as the finger of a glove may be made to do when taking a glove off. This injury can only be gilessed at during life, unless the body be o|iencd in the hope that an operation 'may bo useful. Urge ab-1 scesses and tumours of the liver and kidneys and soma other organs may press upon the gut and cause obstruction. Violent attacks of inflammation within the body may give rise to bands of new fibrous tissue, whfch may cross and compress the gut, and stop the flow through it. The causes of obstruction, then, arc so many Mid various that there can be no single remedv nor mode of treatment. In most cases purgative medicines sullice to cure, and vet in any particular case they might do infinite mischief. It follows, then, that the only sensible way of treating this ailment is to discover the cause and do what is best to remove it. _^___^_____„