FALLACIES OF HYGIENE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7446, 22 May 1911, Page 8

FALLACIES OF HYGIENE

Sir Almroth Wright (says “ The Times speaking in the Theatre Civil Service Commission, Burlington Gardens, London/ on “ Bacteriology' and Hygiene,” said that people who came together in a living community arranged that certain diseases should he suppressed,, and those came under the scope of the law; and it seemed to people that the epidemic diseases were the most important. Certainly they were the most dramatic. If everybody died of the same disease London would he in tears to-morrow; but as everybody died of different diseases nobody thought anything about it at all. If a man died of a microbe which had an interesting name, like sleeping sickness, it was a great deal more interesting.

He referred to the difficulty of diagnosing epidemic diseases, and to the personal hardship and expense of isolation and disinfecting- He said that ws had not enough knowledge to deal with those diseases. There had been a good deal of talk about catching rats, but it was an open questibn whether the catching' of rats would ' stop infection. As to, domestic.hygiene, the ' present methods of dealing with'dramatic epidemics were futile. There was no evidence that the man who\ did not do physical exercises was more liable to disease than the man who did. As to washing, there was a-belief that people washed off the microbes. We did take off a certain amount of microbes, but we also destroyed the protective skin which was all round our bodies like the tiles of a house. When one ; had a horny hand, no microbe could ever get near the skin. If one had a skin like a tortoise microbes would never get through. To have a Turkish bath was to take away one’s horny protection, and he objected to that. With regard to fresh air, why was it only applied to tubercular disease ? Ho held it to be a dreadful superstition. The whole of the doctrine of fresh air required to be revised. - Everybody was agreed that the epidemic diseases were due to microbes; very few had yet appreciated the fact that non-infectious diseases,, ■which were the_ larger part of the diseases of mankind, were also due tc microbes.

They heard of men who were fond of shooting’; banding, themselves together to investigate in grouse, but they never heard of them doing so to investigate their own diseases. In rases of outbreaks in schools he suggested, that a central institute, supported by' the schools should be formed, and when .an epidemic broke out doctors should be .sent to study it. There was no good filling hospitals with people if we did not know' how to treat them. Rich people 1 surrounded themselves with all sorts of luxury, and took absolutely no interest in getting rid of the microbes that surrounded them. He had been in consultation with twenty-,' one doctors round a rich man’s bed, and none of them knew anything about him. ...