WAR'S TRAGIC TOLL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22352, 25 February 1936, Page 15

WAR'S TRAGIC TOLL

"DELAYED ACTION" GAS EX-SOLDIER LOSES SIGHT LUNG CASES ALSO PREVALENT [moil OUR OWN correspondent] SYDNEY. Feb. 17 After working as a cleric since the war, a S.vdney man has gone totally blind, due to mustard gas infection in France. Although a number of similar " delayed action " cases have been reported in England, this is believed to be the first one in Australia. Since the war the man had suffered with slight eye trouble. He did not know until 14 years after his discharge that his ailment was due to gas, and that blindness was his fate. Now, three years later, his sight has completely gone. A Sydney eye specialist diagnosed it as a case of " delayed action." He explained to the Repatriation Department that eye infection from gas usually did not make its appearance until many years after actual contact. The man is now receiving a full pension. " I know of no case in Australia," said a leading Sydney specialist, " of a condition leading to blindness where a patient did not show symptoms of gas injury when in the fighting line. I should be inclined to assume that any patient who had recently become blind through some delayed effect of gas must have needed treatment for gas symptoms during the war period. Blindness occurring now would very probably be in the nature of a relapse. Most soldiers during the war were exposed in some degree to the effects of gas, which might have meant no more than watering of the eyes. I do not think that men who felt the effect of gas to the extent which did not suggest actual injury need feel any anxiety regarding: delayed effect." There have also been many delayed cases of lung trouble. The president of the Tubercular Soldiers' Association, Mr. TV. C. Cridland, said that during the last four years there had been about 200 such cases brought to the attention of the association. It had been found that many of these men had not actually been in a gas attack, but had been stationed in areas in ' which gas was present. Most of them j had no idea until quite recently that ; they had the disease. At the end of the • war it was considered that gas would | work out of the system in seven years, j but medical authorities now knew that this was incorrect.