GOITRE AMONG GIRLS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2608, 19 July 1923, Page 1

GOITRE AMONG GIRLS.

SEEKING THE CAUSE. Tile prevalence of goitre among Christchurch girls was mentioned hy Hr. C. C. Farr, professor of physics at Canterbury College at a meeting of the Canterbury Philosophical Institute last week. Prof. Farr asked if medical men could give a lead as to the cause of the prevalence of the malady. He said one cause possibly might be radium emanation. It was a gas of most potent character physically. One gram of it would produce the same physical effects as 100,000 grams of radium itself. The water of many artesian wells in Christchurch had been examined in the physics laboratory at Canterbury College, and radium emanation had been found in all those examined. Radium was distributed widely in small quantities throughout the earth’s crust and he would expect to And the emanation in all subterranean waters. Goitre was so insistent in Christchurch that another Christchurch resident and the speaker would be pleased to act with the doctors in discovering if the presence of the malady here and the pi'esence of the emanation in artesian water could be correlated. Mr M. IT. Godby, referring to a supposition that two diseases in fish, popeye and bineswelling, were caused by radium emanation, said that one of the diseases had been cured by a small quantity of mud obtained from garden soil being placed in the pond of the affected fish every morning. Dr. Telford said the theory that the prevalence of goitre was due to radium emanation in artesian waters was discounted by Prof. Farr’s statement that the malady attacked one sex more than another. If the theory was sound both sexes should have goitre to the same degree, as presumably the sexes were equal in respect to water drinking.