SELF-MEDICATION FOR GOITRE IS VERY DANGEROUS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18190, 24 June 1927, Page 4

SELF-MEDICATION FOR GOITRE IS VERY DANGEROUS.

DEPARTMENT ISSUES A GRAVE WARNING. (Special to the “ Star.”) WELLINGTON, June 23. At the Australasian Medical Congress in Dunedin, in February last, a resolution was passed urging that goitre remedies should not be sold save on the prescription of a medical man. As an outcome of this, the Department of Health has framed regulations which have just been passed by the Executive Council, and will come | into force immediately. The effect of these regulations is that every bottle of any remedy for goitre sold must bear a statement of ingredients, and also a prominent warning that the remedy should not be taken save under the advice of a medical man. This move is dictated by the alarming increase in the number of cases of ex-ophthaimic goitre, a most serious disease, since the public has learned of iodine treatment, and to-day Dr M. H. Watt made a statement on the position. “During the past few years the undue prevalence of goitre in New Zealand has received a great deal of attention, and much painstaking work has been done by medical officers of the Schools Division of the Department, and by Professor Hercus and his co-wcrkers in the Dunedin Medical School in demonstrating to the public the role that iodine may play in treatment,” said Dr Watt. “The public has seized upon the laci that goitre is due to lack o? iodine, but has failed to appieciate the equally important fact that while a small amount of iodine is necessary for the proper functioning of the thyroid gland, large amounts cannot be taken without serious risk, and that a goitrous patient who takes such quantities, save under close medical supervision, is running a grave chance of developing ex-ophthalmic goitre, a very serious form of the disease, with complications of the worst kind. The increased prevalence of this form of goitre in New Zealand in the last few years would appear to show that sufferers have been dosing themselves indiscriminately with proprietary and patent medicines containing iodine in relatively large proportions, and it is in order to impress on the public the dangers of self-medication, and to safeguard them as far as possible against these dangers, that the regulations have been drafted. “lodised salt, on the contrary, constitutes a vehicle in which any necessary addition of iodine can be taken without risk. In this the proportion of potassium iodine is one part to 250,000 parts of salt, and it can be used safely for all household purposes, including table and cookery. There is evidence in Europe, America and New Zealand that such salt is entirely free from danger, and also has a beneficial effect. Its primary purpose is to prevent goitre from appearing, and it is not a cure for goitre where it has already developed, though cases have occurred where goitre has been lessen ed in size or even disappeared through the use of the salt. In order to popularise its use the Department has decided to allow it to be used in breadmaking.’'