MEDICAL NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11430, 21 July 1900, Page 5 (Supplement)

MEDICAL NOTES.

ASTHMA.

This is a painful ailment, causing much discomfort, and it is very liable to product further disease in tho heart and lungs, because of the struggles to breathe which mark the onset of asthmatic attacks.

Persons subject to this disease have fits of it at intervals of a week, or a month, or a year. The}- may be very well in the interval, or they may be always liable to cough and bronchitis.

It is a disease of the nervous system, which shows itself by spasms of the air-tubes in the lungs. This spasm obstructs the free passage of air in and out of the lungs, causing shortness of breath, difficulty of breathing, and in severe attacks may produce violent and dangerous struggles to breathe. In patients who are subject to asthma the attacks may be brought on by indigestion, by errors in diet, by alcoholic excess, and also by changes of weather, chills, and catarrh.

I general, an attack is preceded by malaise, drowsiness, and headache, but in other cases there is no warning, and a person may go to bed in his usual health, and then, after some hours' sleep, he awakes with a sense of suffocation and a feeling of tightness of the chest. The difficulty of breathing becomes greater, the man pants and gasps; he rushes to the open window or outer air for relief. The pulse becomes small and weak, the eyes seem staring out of the head, the expression of face shows anxiety and the sense of danger to life. After an uncertain period of torture a perspiration bursts out over the skin; there is some coughing, which at length brings up a little phlegm, and the fit passes off, leaving the sufferer exhausted, and he generally falls asleep, These very curious and painful seizures may occur in patients who have no known lung disease, but they are also observed in persons who have bronchitis, pleurisy, and valvular disease of the heart. Asthmatics are generally thin and round-shouldered, hollow in the cheeks, and have a hoarse voice. With great care, attacks may bo rendered few and far between. When related to dyspepsia, an emetic given at once may cut short a fit. An emetic or purgatives are also useful. Strong coffee relieves some cases, and .smoking of tobacco or lobelia cures some others.

LEMONS AND HEALTH. " While you are giving people simple rules for preserving their health, why don't you tell them about the use of lemons?" an intelligent professional man remarked the other day. He went on to say that he had long been troubled with an inactive liver, which gave him a world of pain and trouble, until recently he was advised by a friend to take a glass of hot water with the juice oi half a lemon squeezed into it, but no sugar, night and morning, and see what the effect would be. He tried it, and found himself better almost immediately. His daily headaches, which medicines had failed to cure, left him, his appetite improved, and he gained several pounds in weight within a few weeks. After a while he omitted the drink, cither at night or in the morning, and now at times does without cither of them. "I am satisfied from experiment," said he, " that there is no better medicine for persons who are troubled with bilious and liver complaints than the simple remedy I have given, which is far more efficacious than quinine or any other drug, while it is de void of other injurious consequences. It excites lb., liver, stimulates the digestive 01gans, and tones up the system generally. It is not unpleasant to take, either; one soon gets to like Health.

BEWARE OF "GOLF KNEE." Golf knee is the latest ailment with which the New York doctors are wrestling. The New York Journal says it is a pretty common thing to see it among golfers. It resembles a bad case of " knock knee," and it is caused by the position assumed in driving. People sav of the victim that he is knock-kneed. lie isn't, though, really, for the bones of his leg are still straight. Ho has " golf knee," which, if he is under 30, with bones still soft and malleable, would change to ' knock knee" but for medical interference. That consists of exercise that tends to cause " bow leg," and in cmasi-hyp-notic suggestion of the ungainliness of the golfer's driving pose, and the absurdity of assuming it on every occasion.