HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 14, 9 April 1947, Page 3

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

SHINGLES (By the Department of Health) There is a very painful disease called herpes loster by medical folk, but which has a lay name that all know—shingles. This is an infectious disease. It is caused by. a filterpassing virus, which is some relation of the chickenpox virus. In fact, when there has been a case of chickenpox in a home, it is not at all uncommon to have a case of shingles about a fortnight later in one of the grown-ups living there. Or, if there has been no chickenpox in the actual home and shingles develop, often a contact with chickenpox outside can be traced.

The shingles virus likes our nerves. It is said to spread by contact with sufferers from shingles, but often no contact with another nerve roots, causing trouble there, traced. The virus works on the nerve roots, causing trouble there, and in the sensory nerves. So there are severe pains about the roots of one or more spinal nerves, or about a sonsory cranial nerve. The pain is severe, something like that of a burn and seems to be both deep and on the surface. There will probably be a temperature for the first few days. About the third or fourth day of the illness a rash appears—red at first—upon which raised vesicles full of clear-fluid show up. The appearance is very like chickenpox, with this difference, that the rash affects the area of skin corresponding to one or more nerves, and that it is accompanied by violent neuralgic pains. It drys up between the fifth and tenth days. The rash is unaffected by any treatment. All that can be done is to keep the area dry and clean. A dusting powder of starch and zinc oxide or a collodion dressing is prescribed. Pain requires relief through phenacetin, aspirin pills or something stronger if the doctor thinks it necessary. Remember that shingles is an infectious disease, and avoid direct contact with a sufferer.