CONTROL OF CONSUMPTION

Waikato Independent, Volume XXII, Issue 2575, 22 July 1922, Page 6

CONTROL OF CONSUMPTION

(To the Editor)

Sir,—Your leading article, on the above subject, appearing on the 20th July, 1922, assumes that sanatoria or sanatoriums, control tubuculosis. There is not a vestige of scientific evidence supporting such an assumption. There is less tuberculosis in New Zealand than any other country that has reliable statistics; and our low death-rate from consumption is due to the national immunity which the early colonists imported, from having come out of a hot bed of tuberculosis .in the Old Country. In the past fifty years the death-rate from tuberculosis in England has dropped ••fifty per cent,: and the 'i : n^r63uctieii'Of v ' : - treatment has in no way contributed to this satisfactory state. It has beer- wholly a national .process, in which the mind

of:' man has played no part. There is no

more reason for setting up sanatormms for tuberculosis in New Zealand than there is for appointing a lawyer Minister for Health, a position that should only be open to doctors of science. It is high time that it be recognised that a three-year tenure of office does not enable a man to get a grip of the big problems facing the Minister of Health. With such a rotten tenure no properly equipped man would take the job on, because it gives him inadequate time to formulate and carry through sound schemes for the betterment of the national health. —I am, etc., COSMOS. Cambridge, July 21, 1922.