FIVE DEADLY SCOURGES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19010, 5 November 1923, Page 8

FIVE DEADLY SCOURGES.

DISCUSSED BY MEDICAL MEN. THE HOPE OF THE FUTURE. In his presidential address to the British Aledical Association Congress, Mr Charles P. Childo said they had a Aledical League of Nations, whoso foes were disease and death. During the last 50 years, Mr Chilcc contended, medicine had done more to constitute itself a science than in all the previous ages. This had been mainly due to the flood of light thrown upon the specific causes of many diseases by the epoch-mak-ing discoveries of Pasteur, and the stimulus those discoveries had given to other workers. Of such widespread and prevalent disorders as the surgical infections, enteric fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, syphilis, malarial fever, pneumonia, and many others, the causes were entirely unknown, and their treatment was entirely empirical. All disease was a mystery. A great deal of' it was no longer a mystery. Approximately one-half of the diseases with which we were aoauainted were now known to have their origin in infection by living organisms, belonging either to the plant or to the animal kingdom, and the probability was that the list was not yet nearly exhausted. Considering the most formidable scourges afflicting all northern civilised peoples today. cancer, tuberculosis, rickets, venereal disease, and alcoholism, he said that tuberculosis and rickets accounted for most oi the cripples vve saw about us; cancer, tuberculosis, venereal disease, and alcoholism accounted for most of the deaths; venereal disease and alcoholism accounted for most of the misery and moral degredatton of our race. Speaking of the prevailing ignorance about cancer, he said: . . , “The only things we know about it which are worth knowing are its age incidence, its relation to chronic irritation, and the fact that it is in its beginnings a local disease and that therefore it can be cured by early removal in those situations where removal is possible. “This is practically all we know about cancer. I wish to make only two comments. The first is that this knowledge is not enough. In an age which has yielded the secrets of so many diseases it is a. point of honour with the medical profession not to rest content till this pressing problem has been solved. With the public it is not only an obligation but, from the point ol view -of their own interest ana safety, a vital necessity to furnish the financial means of solution, and to see to it that research is not crippled or stinted by any niggardly parsimony. BEGINNINGS OF CANCER. “The second comment I make is this: The most imnortant fact we know about the disease is' that in its beginnings it i local, and that its'course is a centrifugal spread from its local point of origin. Is that knowledge anything like as productive as it might be? Undoubtedly it is not. Notwithstanding the fact that cancer has been . cured over and over agam by modern oneration—a fact which in itself nroves that it is curable—yet I believe ' patients come no earlier to the doctor with it than they did 30 years agb, enough time is the very condition of the only cure we possess for it. Many medical men, and I confess I an: one of them, are of ooinion that there is considerable room for improvement, in this direction. AVithout resort to any sensationalism some obvious steps could be taken to .spread the knowledge of a few very simple tacts about cancer. This would give a by no means unwarranted ray of hope to the public and would enable some of the victims of this terrible disease to apply in time to have, at all events, a chance of cure or freedom from recurrence, whichever you like to call it.” Proceeding to the discussion of the other scourges, he gave evidence to show that by permitting the sun and fresh air into our slum areas we should see a very marke' general decline in the incidence of tuberculosis. . Observation and experiments on -rickets proved conclusively that a deficient diet could only produce rickets in the absence of sunlight. If abundant sunlight was present a deficient diet was powerless to give rise to it. Lastly, we had the significant fact that the sun’s rays without any other treatment whatever would cure it—an ex pTanation of the oft-repeated dictum that anybody can cure rickets in the summer. Speaking of venereal disease, he said that, however revolting the facts about sex overcrowding in small houses might be. it was right that the public should be made aware of them. This, then, being an example of the state of affairs in our industrial centres, it might be confidently stated thal a great deal, at all events, of immorality and its consequences, venereal disease, was (he direct result of environment—that the conditions existing made either the teaching or practice of morality impossible, and furnished the breeding ground for venereal disease. PURE AIR AND SUNLIGHT. “ What wo are doing now,” Mr Childe concluded, “is to provide the breeding ground for the mass production of disease with one hand, and with tire other paying out millions of the taxpayers and ratepayers’ money to deal with the end-results of the very diseases we are fostering in our midst. Powerful centrifugal forces have come into play, and have come to stay. The working day as a rule begins later, the hours are shorter, the day for half the year is longer owing to the Daylight Saving Act, and the means of rapid transport are available, and are becoming increasingly available, every year. It has become, therefore, practicable in many instances for the worker to live further from bis work—in other words, to move from the centre towards the periphery of our large towns, where land is cheaper and where it becomes, therefore .a business proposition to build on townplanning lines, and avoid the past errors of herding human beings together like sheep in a pen or pigs in a sty. . . . The air space and sun space round the house is of infinitely more importance than the size of the house itself, or whether it contains