HEALTH NOTES.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 278, 7 March 1929, Page 2

HEALTH NOTES.

LONG LIFE. Medical Examinations. (Contributed by the Department of Health). “ Give me health and a day,” wrote Emerson, “ and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.” Health is the normal ideal condition of that physical mechanism we call the human body; and an important means of maintaining this desirable condition is by the means of a periodic medical examination. The idea of a health examination is not new, but only within comparatively recent years has the movement received such impetus as to make it a necessary and important factor in the physical welfare of a nation. It is a wise and useful innovation growing apace and it is evident that it will in time become, a part of community life. No one would now wait for a toothache to drive him to a dentist. The same idea is sensible and w.ll obtain with other structures and functions of the body. Early Diagnosis. The reasons why health examinations are beneficial are so obvious that hardly any arguments for them are necessary. They are, of course, advantageous to the individual in that they serve to detect the beginning of organic disease or to discover the existence of definite physical impairments of which the person may have been unaware. Faulty personal habits of living, errors of hygiene, and possible shortcomings in enj vironmental conditions are frequently brought out. For instance, the opportunity of completely reviewing the physical conditions of recruits by military boards in New Zealand daring the Great War revealed the v'.lue and necessity of such examinatio s. The system of medical inspection of school children affords another striking illustration of the value of the 1 early detection of physical deformities and disease. In this case the examination also serves as a guide for parents in the selection of suitable employment for children with known defects.

As the public health movement has progressed, sanitary science has triumphed over environmental conditions, and, broadly speaking, over many of the communicable diseases. Such diseases as typhoid fever are definitely on the wane. The death knell has been sounded for hookworm, malaria, and yellow fever; diphtheria is being conquered; man has vanquished smallpox, though this insidious foe is ever watchful for the time when carelessness, apathy, and ignorance release it to ravage again. The venereal diseases have been recognised as health enemies as well as moral ones. Tuberculosis is losing in its fight on human existence. Infant mortality is also succumbing.

As these diseases and their death rates go down, others rise to take their places. Cancer, kidney diseases, heart trouble, diabetes, apoplexy and other organic diseases seem to be on the increase. The death rates from them are either rising or else the trend is stationary, or only slightly downward. The secret in combating these maladies in every case is in an early diagnosis. For that matter, diagnosis at the very onset is important in checking any disease, and applies with special emphasis to many of those which have been previously mentioned, such as tuberculosis.

The average span of life in New Zealand is increasing, but it would forge ahead much faster if the present knowledge regarding communicable diseases was universally applied. It will increase even more when the rules of personal hygiene are thoroughly employed. In the meantime, and for all time, health examinations have a real place in the advancement of our national vitality. Taken in Time. What is the periodic health examination? By a periodic health examination we mean the use of aH those resources of a physician, by question, observation, and tests, through the application of which he distinguishes between health and disease, when applied to persons who, so far as they are aware, are not suffering from any disability or disease. The physician is faced with a client, a pupil seeking guidance in health, rather than sought by a patient who believes himself to be sick. The health client comes to learn

whether in his happy disregard of minor discomforts, or shall we say while inattentive to slowly-develop-ing and insidious disease, he is as well as he is capable of being, and by a better adjustment to his fellows and to his physical surroundings,, and to the obligations to his work and family, he may escape the too rapid advance of the infirmities of his years, and correct the habits at fifty which may have been safe and useful at thirty. When people are subjectively aware of disease the time has usually passed for the most hopeful and effective curative or corrective treatment. Only by detecting heart and kidney lesions, cancer or diabetes in the earliest stages, even when the patient is wholly satisfied with his apparent state of health, can we most nearly approximate cure by the use of the medical sciences. Enough has been indicated to stress the importance of a periodic physical examination of the human machine by the family doctor, more especially so from the age of forty years upwards, when the diseases mentioned often have their onset. For the protection of workers in what are known as dangerous trades in certain cases such examinations are compulsory by law. It is realised in these trades from experience that prevention is better than cure, and the profound wisdom of this old maxim equally applies to all walks of life. However, one should not be unduly and morbidly solicitous about one’s health and drift ingloriously into the ranks of the valetudinarians. Yet at the same time, though death is a necessary and i-evitable end, it behoves all individuals to avail themselves of every means to prolong existence at least to three score years and ten, and one of the important means to this end is an occasional overhaul by a qualified physician skilled by experience and training in the early signs of the ills that flesh is heir to.