PREVALENT DISEASES.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1426, 13 November 1923, Page 6

PREVALENT DISEASES.

GETTING AT THE ROOT

Attention is so easily arrested by the ravages of the great diseases like smallpox, influenza, cancer, tuberculosis, or venereal that we are liable to forget the largest burden of our invalidity and the chief contribution to premature mortality are due to the neglect of the comparatively minor or incipient forms of sickness and ill-health. Moreover, they are not only causes iOf incapacity, but they lay the foundation of the major diseases: The public health service is naturaly and properly designed to combat gross evils, but it will never be really effective until and unless the origin of those gr,oss evils are dealt with, and amongst |such ofrigSnjs is neglected minor disease. It is not easy to overestimate the harvest of sickness and death directly attributable to the neglect of such maladies and dental caries, oral sepsis, habitual constipa tion. neglected colds, dyspepsia, measles or discharging l ears. We seem to shut the main gates of the city against a common enemy, but leave operi a dozen doors by which he may enter in. "We have been spending money and labour for years in dealing with gross disease in the adult, yet we are only n,ow learning the old lesson that we must prevent its onset in childhood."—Sir George Newman, chief medical officer of the British Ministry of Health.