PREVALENCE OF GOITRE.

Waipa Post, Volume XX, Issue 1244, 18 May 1922, Page 7

PREVALENCE OF GOITRE.

DR THACKER ON 'DIET.

The prevalence of goitre in Christchurch was the subject of an interview with Dr Thacker M.P., with special regard to some of the known facts relative to the disease and the methods that ought to be taken to combat it. In the main Dr Thacker indicated that proper dieting on ifresh food was one of the important factors in the eradication of the disease. He said that a full cure of the goitre trouble could be effected only by determining the exact causes and putting the whole of the people of New Zealand on to a proper diet of fresh food grown on soils that have the nceessary chemical

constituents, and by attending to housing, lighting, cooking, sanitation, and the ratioal enjoyment of the people. "At the recent break-ups of schools," he .said, " and at presentations to departing headmasters, I observed, owing to the fashion of 'low-necked dressing on girls, that practically one in every.ten (perhaps more than that) had commencing or developed goitre. Operations and medical tratment will not eradicate the disease, and most pro'bably the mighty Evolutionist has evolved goitre—with the very ugly symptoms of an enlarged gland in the throat, which otherwise in man and woman should be a thing of beauty —to direct man's attention back to a proper diet. " Goitre cannot be caused by water. Only a certain number of individuals in a community have it. If water caused it, and there is a common water supply, everybody ought to have the disease. If in a family of six or eight two of the children have goitre, it is personal to them, and there is something wrong in their regime of life."