“GROWING PAINS.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3709, 27 October 1927, Page 4

“GROWING PAINS.”

WARNING OF RHEUMATISM. HEALTH MINISTRY’S ADVICE. London, October ,12. The Ministry of Health is .taking an interest in “growing pains.” Often these are regarded as a purely natural trouble affecting children, and of no special importance. But the Ministry’s doctors,who have been recently investigating rheumatism, now declare that often growing pains are the earliest warning of rheumatic infection. As, according to Sir George Newsman, the chief medical adviser of the Ministry of Health, in London alone there are 2,000 children receiving in-patient treatment for rheumatic diseases, these injuries are of considerable national importance. Dr. J. Alison Glover, a medical officer of the Ministry responsible for recent inquiries into acute rheumatism in children in its relation to heart disease, states: “It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the most, striking point in the histories of these rheumatic children is the fact that they gave a history of joint pains or ‘growing pains’ at some period prior to the appearance of definite manifestations of attack by rheumatism in the vast majority of cases. This complaint on the child’s part, unless the pains are of great severity, is often disregarded by the mother. The pains are put down to natural ‘growing pains,’ the effects of chill are often thought to be imaginary, and it is not until the disease flares up and becomes severei that the child is brought foi treatment, by wjiich often incalculable damage is done.”