RESPIRATORY DISEASES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4490, 10 November 1922, Page 2

RESPIRATORY DISEASES.

THE ACTION OF DUST. A pamphlet has Just been publlshr ed officially in America in which it is shown how formidable al’e the rav-ages-Of influenza, and respiratory diseases' in general, among workers in stone quarries and other dusty occupations. The figures', indeed, reveal the astonishing fact that dusty worx increases by nearly 50 per cent, the risk o? death during winter epidemics. Those engaged in it are more susceptible to infection; they are more liab’ke tp suffer complications, and their powers pf recovery are restricted It has already been siiffiA ciently demonstrated -that this is not a consequence of any irritation which dust' may exercise locallythe dust acts, it would rather appear, as a chemical poison. Thus/ one affliction leads to another, until there is produced a condition in which the human organism can no longer battle with .its environment. This is but a fresh, i frustration of the view that our earlier conceptions of disease were much too simple. A decade ago it was confidently affirmed that if the “seed” was present the noxious be counted on to grow; in other words, that infection was the one es- y sential preliminary to illness. This idea led td the active campaigns which were organised disease bacteria, the hope being that their abolition would result in the abolition of the diseases occasioned bythem. Medicine has largely abandoned that hope, for it is now certain that the “soil,” as much as the “seed,” determines the outcome. There are, in fact, disease-proof individuals and other individuals whose susceptibility is i much greater than normal. Susceptibility, too, can be won or lost. The rnindsjff many workers are turns, ing to this aspect of the subject, for it is already abundantly clear that control of< human resistance offers a brighter future than direct attempts to eliminate disease. For example, it is easier to replace sandstone grind-ing-wheels by wheels made of emery than to stamp out the tubercle bacillus—yet the effect, it would seem, of the easy method is similar to that which the vastly difficult one might be expected to produce. It is easier, too, to supply children in winter with an adequate supply of butter or other animal fat than to sweep their nurseries clear of the germs of pneumonia or bronchitis. The butter in this case makes the ' soil ’ unsuitable for the ‘seed.’ Incidentally .preventive medicine is coming to the home. Dusty homes, while they do not, of course, compare with dusty workshops in point of danger, are -a menace to health. So, also is a diet-,-ary, however 'liberal and costly,, which Jacks the essential food factors. Too often, indeed, as is now ' becoming clear, the doors have been opened wide to disease at the verjr moment when precautions ajgainst its surreptitious entry seemed to be most complete.