TREATMENT OF GOITRE

Southland Times, Issue 19515, 15 May 1922, Page 6

TREATMENT OF GOITRE

THE lODINE METHOD. EXPERIMENTS BY SCHOOL MEDICAL OFFICERS. (Per United Press Association.) AUCKLAND, May 12. The Hon. C. J. Parr referred to-day to comments in a southern paper in effect that the Health Department had not been doing anything in the way of experiments and treatment to cope with goitre, which has been malting its appearance in the South Island. Mr Parr' said he had just received a report from Dr Wilkins (Director of School Hygiene) as follows: “An. experiment in the treatment of goitre in school children by the administration of very small doses of iodine is being carried on by Dr Eleanor Baker, school medical officer at Christchurch. It will, howver, be necessary to study the effects of the treatment for a number of years before a decided pronouncement can be made as to the permanent results. A total of 596 children have been under treatment, and observations have also been kept of 756 untreated children. So far the results are on the whole very satisfactory, and the experiments have proved well worth while. That diminuition in size of the goitre occurs in a fair proportion of the cases treated, and only in a very few of those not treated, appears to be confirmed by the results obtained in a similar experiment by Dr Gunn, school mediaal officer at Wanganui. As the result of the extensive experiment in America and other countries treatment by small doses of iodine is the only method which has so far been shown to give beneficial results. The exact cause of the disease still remains obscure.” Mr Parr said he was asking Dr Baker and Dr Hercus, of the Medical School of the University of Otago, w’ho had been making investigations to report specifically on their treatment methods and experiments.