SUNLIGHT TREATMENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3796, 24 May 1928, Page 3

SUNLIGHT TREATMENT.

Auckland, May 22. “With regard to sunlight treatment, it is largely advocated now, and has become very popular because of its value in the treatment of rickets and tuberculosis,” said Mr. Leslie J. Thompson, F.R.C.S., an Auckland surgeon who has returned to Auckland after a twelve months’ tour abroad. Mr. Thompson said artificial sunlight was not a “quack” thing, but scientific treatment. A lot of new things were overrated, especially by untrained persons, but in rickets particularly artificial rays were used with great success. ■ An interesting part of Mr. Thompson’s tour was that which included a visit to Detroit and Airport. Here they were guests of Mr. Henry Ford and his son Edsle. Mr. Henry Ford has a wonderful hospital, which is a hobby of his. He maintains a fully-paid medical staff numberng something «near 100, and a staff of about 200 nurses. The patients number only about 300. The nurses’ home is a sumptuous place. Each patient and each nurse has a single room with a bathroom. In fact, said Mr. Thompson, in nearly all modern hospitals in America every patient has his own room and bathroom.

In reply to a question as to how the work of our hospitals compared with what he had seen overseas, Mr. Thompson said it was quite good here, but we suffered from lack of opportunity for an exchange of ideas. In England a great deal of attention is being paid to the value of the general practitioners’ work, because of the importance of the >. recognition of early symptoms and their classification, not only in the cure of disease but in its prevention in the early stages. The late Sir James Mackenzie founded an institute at St, Andrew’s where general practitioners co-operated with specialists in research work, and many are regarding their participation as a most important thing in the furtherance of medical research. Institutes of that sort would be valuable in countries such as New Zealand, where we have a lack of means of co-operation between men in hospitals and those not in hospitals.