WONDERS OF TUBERCULIN

Taranaki Daily News, 16 December 1926, Page 11

WONDERS OF TUBERCULIN

DETECTOR OF CONSUMPTION EARLY TREATMENT ESSENTIAL. WORK AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN. “The Health Department first wants to get some idea of the number of children in our schools who may have latent tuberculosis or w«j may be predisposed to it, and secondly to have these children suitably treated,” wrote Dr. Baker-McLaglan in a report considered by the Taranaki Education Board yesterday. Members expressed themselves most appreciatively of the department’s efforts in this direction. “We now know that comparatively few peopb would, die from tuberculosis if all casgp were recognised and placed under suitable treatment in the early stages of the disease,” proceeded the doctor. “The disease could be prevented in the majority of instances by providing suitable conditions and treatment for those who, without this provision, would be liable to become victims.”

It was the department’s, hope, said the report, that as many early cases and susceptible children as possible should be discovered and treated in what might be called the “pre-tuber-cular” stage, in which the prospects of cure were very good. By a sipiple test it was now possible to distinguish the child with a tendency to tuberculosis. A small quantity of ointment consisting of tuberculin and lanoline was rubbed into about two square inches of the child’s body. Tuberculin contained no tubercle microbes whatever, or any other microbes. It was a dead, sterilised and standardised extract of a culture of tubercle bacilla grown in the laboratory on suitable food. But it was no more a tubercle bacillus itself, or alive, than extract of digitalis was a growing foxglove plant or cochineal .a collection of live beetles. It could not cause tuberculosis because it contained no live microbes, but if a child ’were 3 unduly sensitive to the disease the skin where the ointment was rubbed would in a day or two show a red flush with a few red spots, whereas the skin of a child not susceptible would show no sign -whatever. The test, therefore, was applied without pain and as a rule gave little or no inconvenience. A beginning had been made with the tuberculosis investigation in Wellington and Dr. Mo Laglan said she had met the parents of Opawa school children dnd was to meet those at Sumner. The staffs of both schools had agreed to do everything in their power to help. No child wouM be tested without the written consent of the parents which would receive a report on the test.