GRAPHIC NOTINGS

Otago Witness, Issue 3804, 8 February 1927, Page 5

GRAPHIC NOTINGS

By

LENS.

(Specialt Written for the Otago Witness.)

If doctors in these days did not know so much, pray what w’ould happen to the world through those diseases that, asserting themselves again and again in more or less pandemic form, always exact a fearful toll? Let it be said that if the answer to this is “Sweep it clean,” then either we have become less able than our ancestors to withstand an onslaught, or the germs in mind have become more virulent by the process of evolution. While opportunity has been taken to show several other kinds it is influenza that is the excuse for the drawing, and its reappearance in Europe just now the reason for these remarks with it. Go back! All great wars have been followed by pestilence in some form or other, either immediately or at no distant time, and then, often enough, for the repetition, and sometimes one after another. Take that terrible thing which history speaks of as the Black Death. Strictly speaking, it followed the Crusade, and then reasserted itself—a curious reflection obtruding that it was through the worst iisitation in England that we got unionism, as the toilers of the time, taking advantage of the inroads upon their ranks, combined to exact higher wages, and the Statute iof Labourers was enacted to put them down. Combinations occuring in spite of this, generation after generation, Act followed Act, and it was only a little over a hundreds years ago when Parliament, conscious at last of the uselessness of forbidding men to sell their services to the fullest advantage, repealed the lot. Well, first to last, the Black Death killed a third of the population of all Europe, but then where was medicine? There is every reason for believing that the Black Death was a respiratory disease. Proof is provided by what was done in some of the cities—they burnt bonfires to reduce the moisture in the atmosphere, and there is a record extant that states that a famous “leech” advised warm bandages over the chest to stimulate the heart. Assuming that the Black Death germ was really influenza, then it could not have been as bad as the thing that has come into our lives since the Great War of 1914-1918, as had it been, then, instead of killing a third of the European stock, it would probably have killed nearly the whole of it. Likewise with the plague that followed the Thirty Years’ War, striking first this country and then that at different times, and likewise with the cholera visitation that followed the Napoleonic series, running a broken course for something like 20 years. Sir F. W. Andrewes, Professor of Pathology at the University of London, is decidedly instructive in this matter , in his published lecture, “Disease in the Light of Evolution,” showing that as time proceeds certain germs may be-

come more virulent even as others may become less so. That the influenza germ was already lurking in a bad form when the Great War broke out witness a previous manifestation in “La Grippe,” and the belief is that what happened then revived it with added malignancy, producing a germ of a far more tenacious character. We turn up our notebook to see these entries:—• In Europe the consequent epidemic must have killed some millions, as witness Great Britain, where an official Research Committee reported in November, 1919, that more had perished of the complaint than fell at the front. In Asia the “sweep” must have been frightful, as 3,000,000 were destroyed in India alone. In Africa it attacked the very monkeys in the forest. In the two Americas it ran a very severe course, the United States for the chief country there, vide Munsey’s Magazine of the time, losing as many as 500,000. And here, in New Zealand, and again in Australia, it took a considerable toll, as witness the files. We are speaking of deaths, not of cases. Assuming one death in 10, then 10 times as many were attacked, and the argument is that if medicine had been where it was in the Dark Ages it would have been ever so much worse. Professor Andrewes endeavoured to make his lecture more interesting by referring at length to that “Royal College of Physicians” and that “Royal College of Dispensers,” the army in the blood and their weapons. There they are, ever on the alert to deal with the invading germ, these “doctors” of Nature itself meeting toxins with anti-toxins, and, in the case of survivals, winning. The value of any such remarks lies in this—it only shows how very necessary it is for the individual to look after himself. Influenza finds a shining mark in the debilitated, no matter what the cause—old age (which cannot be prevented), and impoverished blood, the result of malnutrition and anxiety (which can be). We may emphasise the fact that as regards Europe the penalties of the Great War still press—less work, reduced wages, worry, and fear. If influenza of the kind being dealt with finds the victim unprepared to resist it, then one thing is calculated to lead to another, and pneumonia is the final one. Pneumonia fills the air cells of the lungs, it may be of one (single pneumonia) or of both (double). If things come to the worst then all that there is for it is arioperation, which means opening the side enough to allow the discharge to be drawn off that way. The danger with this operation lies in the main in the

shock to the nervous system after the immediate rally. The patient is weak, and so while the nurse is able to report an improvement with the surgeon gone, as likely as not a little later she sees a change that induces her to summon the relatives whose presence is desirable to say “Good-bye.”

Man is both fearfully and wonderfully made, and it so happens that, unlike in a machine, the most vulnerable part of him is the least well protected. To get a graphic picture of the lungs imagine them exposed, and so with the air cells showing a kind of cross section, throat • to lobe, but with everything upside down, as though we had the model standing on his head. We see the larynx, and ith a little imagination it suggests a “root,”' and then the windpipe, which may be likened to the trunk. And we see to right and left of this two tubes, the bronchial ones (hence bronchitis),, and what they result in is something suggestive of a plant—sub-branches and leaves. These make the lungs, our breathing apparatus, each being enclosed in a “bag” called the pleura (hence pleurisy). Tho patent medicine people, when dealing with coughs and colds, are fond of describing the mouth as the “gateway of disease,” and it is—the main one, and with influenza rampant it can become a carriage drive. Which throws some light on a cable stating that many eases with the present visitation in Europe are attributed, or were, to the kissing of relatives and others during Christmas. Kissing in such circumstances is a very ■ dangerous form of salutation, and - touching kissing generally it may be observed that it is a tradition in Europe for men to kiss their own sex, albeit it is only by touching the cheek. It may be said that, when it is a disease that is very catching, the germ, of course, being a respiratory one, there is danger in tho breath. If what doctors say is correct it is not necessary for lips to touch lips, —the mere breath can infect if the suffeeing person is close enough for the purpose. A remarkable thing about thia post-war Aggravated thing we call influenza is that, notwithstanding periods when it seems to have become “at- . tenuated,” it has the faculty of varying its character. With the lungs always'attacked it has sometimes struck at the digestive system, and sometimes at something else. In instances it lias attacked the hearing, in instances again the sight, and with the 1918-1919 visitation it sometimes struck the brain —the victims lost their reason. Some fault is found with the name —influenza is not nearly impres* • sive enough. ■ A germ that can turn th< .. victim’s hair white, as it has turned it • on occasions enough to count, is gives! • a disguise in a name which custom re- • fuses to associate with a fell destroyer.