HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 23, 11 September 1946, Page 7

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

MEDICINE IN PEACE TIME (By the Department of Health) Out of this last war we emerged with a vast amount of information and wonderful discoveries to be developed and adapted to peacetime use. This is particularly true on the medical side. Penicillin from common bread mould was an outstanding discovery that made syphilis, gonorrhoea and some types of pneumonia take a knock-out blow. It is proving useful in meningitis, in sepsis in wounds and elsewhere, carbuncles, osteomyelitis, and so on, but its ultimate sphere in medicine has yet to be determined in the peacetime now with us. Blood banks and the use of blood plasma saved lives and will continue to do so. Out of the blood plasma business came a discovery that may be useful in peacetime. In

that part of the blood not used for plasma there was a substance that would protect temporarily against measles. This globulin, or immune serum, will stave off or lessen the severity of a measles attack when given early enough before exposure. If developed in peacetime, it will be very useful for young children or those older ones in poor health from any cause, and in whom an attack of measles would be unfortunate.

The. universal use of X-rays to detect tuberculosis in the armed forces became a practice in this last war. The peacetime use of this weapon against disease will develop, as X-ray plants, technicians and radiologists become available. One cannot enumerate all the medical knowledge that developed in the war just over. Most of it will find peacetime use. One thing that was revealed, however, needs future action. And that was the amount of below par health that existed in our young men and women. Thousands were unfit for military duty because of conditions that could and should have been corrected. Are we going to let this happen again? Those who entered the armed services were kept fit, through exercise, regularity, supervised feeding and early treatment of defects before they became serious: Let us apply this •to peacetime and give our children every chance to have and keep buoyant health.