HEALTH COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2791, 2 October 1907, Page 76

HEALTH COLUMN.

The Real Cause of Consumption.

1 A German physician, Dr Robert Hessen, has recently published the results of his j researches concerning the real cause of consumption, which he ascribes to the checking of the purifying function of the pores of the ekin. In support of this theory he some interesting facts (says the New York Nation). Fresh air and out-of-door exercise are important factors in the prevention of this disease. For this reason in England 1500 persons in a million die or consumption, whereas in Germany there are 2000, and among the Russian peasants 3500. The latter pass the winter wrapped in, sheepskins near a warm fire, and rarely if ever wash their bodies. Dr Hessen further cays that young women who are employed in stores to chow furs and walk to and fro all day in these warm garments usually suffer from phthisis. This was also the tate of the English comedians who some years ago masked themselves in hides in order to represent animals on the stage. Although these plays were very popular, the mortality of the actors from pulmonary disease soon put a stop to them. Dr Daniel Diehl, the chief physician of tha Hamburg-American Steamship Company, states in hie book of travels, "An Bord und im Satfel," that Patagonians and other tribes who go naked are never consumptive ; % and the Norwegian zoologist and Arctic explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, in his volume, "In Night and Ice," asserts the same of the Eskimos, who always go naked in their huts Only in Western Greenland, whore the natives, have beon converted to Christianity and persuaded by tlie missionaries to wear clothea, doe-, pulmonary disease prevail.