BABY’S LIFE SAVED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27389, 15 May 1950, Page 6

BABY’S LIFE SAVED

Victim Of “ Pink Disease ” DISCOVERY BY SIR STANTON HICKS By Durham Fenwick MELBOURNE, May 9. Medical advice cabled from Australia has saved the life of a 17-month-old “pink baby” in Swansea, Wales. The advice was based on the discoveries announced earlier this year by Professor Sir Stanton Hicks, head of the Physiology Department of the University of Adelaide, and a young colleague, Dr Donald Cheek. They announced ’that “pink disease” was caused by loss of salt from the system through faulty functioning of the suprarenal gland, and that doses of common table salt and injections of a hormone would cure it. The Welsh baby, David Jones, was dying when his mother was shown a report of the Hieks-Cheek discoveries. She cabled for details. Two days later the reply arrived directing that David be given two teaspoons of salt with his meals each day and giving the prescription for a daily intra-muscular injection. The child has now been completely cured. Sir Stanton Hicks, who was born at Mosgiel, was at one time lecturer in pathology at the Otago Medical School