TALKS ON HEALTH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 246, 16 October 1937, Page 3

TALKS ON HEALTH

(By a Family Doctor) DON’T GET POISONED. You know my plan is to make a list of all diseases and then put a blue pencil line through the ones we have abolished. I want to abolish food poisoning. I have seen some very bad cases, and they always give me a fright; with the poison floating round in their systems they look so ill they are blue and collapsed and in great pain, and it takes hard work and careful nursing to bring them round. Needless to say, the prevention of ptomaine poisoning is better than its cure. The caterers owe the public a duty in exercising every precaution to keep the food sweet. Sometimes it may be bad luck that a piece of tainted fish or meat reaches a customer; but I feel sure there are a few careless shopkeepers who fail to realise the seriousness of the crime of serving out poison instead of nourishing food. Some day we shall be ruled over by a beneficient Mikado who will make the punishment fit the crime; the offenders will then be made to eat their own tainted food. Watch Your Meals. The fact that the food is bad may be painfully evident almost directly it is eaten. In that case, everyone at the table should adjourn for the necessary but unpleasant purpose of emptying their stomachs. A drink of mustard and water will act as an emetic, and a finger stuck at the back of the throat will assist the process. If the food has passed through the stomach castor oil is the best remedy; it helps to cast forth the offending matter at the earliest moment. Stomach Troubles To combat the collapse the patient should be put in bed with three or four hot water bottles packed round him; he is cold and clammy, and as I Nature cannot provide the necessary warmth we must do it for him. He may need brandy. He may kr given drinks of hot water; if he keeps it down it will do good, and if he vomits it, it will help to clear out the stomach. His mouth should be cleansed by frequent washings; any good toothwash will do. or very dilute solutions of potassium permanganate made with the crystals so that the water is just pink. Beware of using the solution too strong; it is a mistake to make up the mouth-wash from crystals so that it is as dark as claret. Feeding is rather a problem. We have to deal with a stomach that has been tormented and insulted by the poisoned food, and it is not in a mood to digest anything. For the first few hours judicious starvation is the best. Then a little brandy and milk may be taken, the amount being cautiously increased as the patient feels better. He is sure to feel the shock of the illness and you must take great care of him; do not let him rush back to work too soon; send him away to convalescence at the seaside.

Yellow Blood. If you look at a drop of blood under the microscope, you are surprised to see that it is not a red fluid at all; it is a very pale yellow fluid which has almost no colour when spread out in a thin layer on a glass side. Floating in the blood are countless millions of little red discs; they look deep red in a mass; one seen by itself is a pale yellowish red. Each little disc contains a chemical which has the power of carrying oxygen (fresh air) from the lungs to the tissues of the body. When you go from your stuffy office to Switzerland for your holiday, you mount some thousands of feet into the air where the pressure of the atmosphere is much less. You remember the old experiments that made such a sensation. When the barometer is carried to the top of a mountain the mercury falls because the atmosphere does not press so I heavily on the open end. Our Heavy Air. You are apt to forget how heavy the air is. Put a glass bell-jar on a rubber pad and exhaust all the air out of it by an air-pump. Then you have the atmosphere pressing on the outside of the bell-jar and no air inside to press in the opposite direction. Now try to lift the bell-jar; you cannot shift it; the terrific pressure of the air which amounts to about 141 b. to the square inch is far stronger than your arms. Now our little friends the blood-discs are adapoted to work in the ordinary atmosphere of our English levels; it gives them a bit of a shock to be suddenly raised to the top of a Swiss mountain. They cannot take in the fresh air quite so easily as in the low pressure levels. On the first morning your energetic brother shouts out “Come on, Sis, let’s go for a jolly long walk up the mountain.” You are already at a good height in your hotel; he wants to go still higher. To your surprise you begin to feel very tired and rather puffed, and you ask to sit down: Your head may feel a little swimmy. All this is the effect of the rarefied atmosphere. And you really must not do too much for the first week. I am all against holidays that have to be recovered from. If you are already anaemic, that if, if your blood is short of red blood-discs, do not go to a mountainous district for your summer rest. Wage War Again Vermin. Mosquitoes have been shown to be the cause of malaria; body lice have been proved to convey typhus fever; the tsetse-tsetse fly of South Africa was found guilty of giving disease to the cattle; the flea of the rat is he criminal that introduces plague into the human system; the common house-fly carries the germs of diarrhoea and vomiting on its feet and drops them into the milk, and so on and so on. The insect world contains some of our most cruel enemies. Please take this to heart. Do not let your house harbour insects of any kind. Your own bodies must be as clean as a new pin. Your children must not go to school with the smallest evidence of insect life about them. Dirt and insects breed disease, and I must ask for your help in waging war against them. Corns. For soft corns between the toes, dust them every morning with boracic powder and place a thin layer of absorbent cotton over the corn. For hard corns, rub the thick skin off with a piece of fine sandpaper and remove the small had centre with a knife, being careful not to make the toe bleed. Grease well with vaseline

night and morning, thus keeping it soft till the healthy skin has a chance to take the place of the hard callous. Allow plenty of soap and water, and brush thoroughly with a good brush — this stimulates circulation and keeps the hard callous from forming. Rinse the feet in cold water, and dry thoroughly, again applying vaseline to the corn. Bunions may also be treated in this way. The Clever Injured. I am interested in the subject of ability of workers who have met with an accident to their hands being able to continue to earn their living. I have notes of some remarkable instances of men in saw-pits who have lost some or all of their lingers and have yet been able to carry out all the manipulations necessary in their trade with extraordinary ease. Then I saw an old lady whose hands were completely crippled with rheumatism, so that she could scarcely move any of the fingers, and yet by putting crochet needles between the deformed fingers she was able to do beautiful work and earn quite a decent Jiving by making babies’ clothes. It was one of the best examples of self-help I had ever seen. Many another woman in similar circumstances would simply have gone into the workhouse.