SIMPLE GOITRE,

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3675, 6 August 1927, Page 2

SIMPLE GOITRE,

A PREVENTIVE. An M.D. writes as follows to the Dominion:

“Sir, —I should be obliged if you would grant me a little space to correct some of the impressions that are abroad on the subject of simple goitre. In the first place it is not a serious malady, but many may be made so by injudicious meddling as for example taking iodine to cure it.

“It. has long been known that simple goitre has something to do with the drinking water, and in parts of Switzerland where the complaint is prevalent, changing the drinking water has been immediately followed by a great reduction in the number of eases. Dr. MeCarrison, who Jias spent years in investigating this complaint, has brought forward evidence so strong as to be almost conclusive that the cause is infection of water with intestinal flova and that the infection agent gets into the body with the intestinal tract. Dr. McCarrison, who. has worked in Derbyshire, Switzerland and India —places where simple goitre is endemic —has also proved that there is no connection between the geological formation of the soil and the prevalence of the complaint.

“Working on these lines, he was. able to give himself and other men a simple goitre through merely drinking infected water, and the same result was got by him in animals.

“He has also proved (and this is the point I wish to stress particularly) that the infection agent whatever it may be is destroyed by boiling the water before drinking it, and that this absolutely prevents you developing a simple goitre if you are living in a district where the complaint is endemic. “This simple prevention is so simple that some may prefer to run risks and “put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less” to the easier and simpler plan of not washing in the Jordan.”