PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WELFARE

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 67, 23 February 1938, Page 1

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WELFARE

INSURANCE AND/OR PREVENTION. (By “Silent Peter”). Dear People,— “An ounce of prevention is worth more than a lb. of insurance and costs much less,” muses Mother New Zealand. “Here am I, with fifteen hundred thousand children whose chronic lack of health and vitality causes me a dead loss of about ten million pounds per annum. My political advisers now desire me to adopt a scheme of national health insurance, in the form of a revised version of a measure which has already had a quarter of a century’s trial in Britain. PREVENTION BY PUBLIC HYGIENE, “Foremost among the arguments placed before me with a view to convincing me that the suggested scheme will reduce my present annual loss of ten million pounds through industrial inefficiency caused by ill-health —to say nothing of waste of life and happiness—is the unfounded statement that earlier diagnosis and treatment will bring about ‘medical prevention’ of ill-health. In the first place,” argues Mother New Zealand, “the incidence of many infectious and other diseases has been reduced during the past quarter of a century in a number of countries in which national health insurance has not yet been established. These reductions in disease—but not in physical and mental ill-health—have resulted as a consequence of health services provided by public authorities and voluntary organisations. Such health services have operated in the past and will doubtless continue to operate in the future, whether or not national health insurance becomes established. MEDICAL PREVENTION. “In the second place,” continues Mother New Zealand, “earlier diagnosis and treatment have been in operation under the British National Health Insurance scheme during the past twenty-five years, and have definitely proved themselves powerless to prevent over two-thirds of insured sick people in Britain from succumbing to those diseases of civilisation which are a direct result of wrong feeding and ought therefore to have been amenable to preventive measures. The diseases in question have been found by Sir Robert McCarrison to fall chiefly within three categories, i.e., diseases of the lungs, diseases of the stomach and intestines, and diseases of the nerves. PREVENTION OF MEDICAL PREVENTION. “In the third place,” determines Mother New Zealand, “what I want, quite apart from and perhaps in addition to national health insurance, is some scheme of prevention of illhealth which will begin to operate long before any medical diagnosis shall become necessary or desirjvßle—and therefore before any financial benefits from insurance shall be needed. In this connection, many of my children pin their faith to physical education—a good thing, certainly, but merely a supplementary measure. My scientific advisers inform me, as the result of their practical experience, that physical fitness is dependent fundamentally upon a scientific dietary, and that exercise alone is no more capable of reforming national health than is insurance itself. NUTRITIONAL PREVENTION. “In this respect,” comments Mother New Zealand, “Dr. Ada Platts-Mills tells me that every ten of my school children are suffering from preventible defects attributable solely to wrong feeding. Further, Sir Richard Gergory informs me that scientific nutrition is not only capable of avoiding certain specific deficiency diseases, but also has the power of reducing that chronic lack of health which is showing itself in all civilised communities in the form of widespread and lifelong poor vitality and impaired efficiency. PREVENTION OF POSTERITY. “In addition,” Mother New Zealand reminds herself, “I must not forget that Dr. M. B. Benner, the eminent Swiss dietetic physician, advises me that such chronic lack of health is more harmful to the present and to the possibly coming generations than are the more definite and advanced forms of ill-health which call for medical diagnosis and treatment. The chronic lack of health, he tells me, brings about degeneration of the spiritual life of the individual and of the community, causes the physical condition to deteriorate, and damages the germplasm from which a strong, sane and vital posterity would otherwise spring. PREVENTION OF MASS SUICIDE. “What I want to know,” concludes Mother New Zealand, “is just what steps our coming scheme of national health insurance will incorporate with a view to prevention of some of these tendencies in the direction of material and spiritual degeneracy. Many of my children may need temporary financial assistance in meeting doctors’ and other bills that accumulate during a time of unavoidable illhealth. However, what they do more urgently need is advice regarding prevention of illness, prevention of unhappiness, prevention of inefficiency, and prevention of avoidable financial burdens, including that of any costly scheme of insurance against needless and out-of-date illhealth,”