GROWING HEAD

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 118, 11 January 1932, Page 7

GROWING HEAD

AUSTRALIAN AFFLICTED WITH STRANGE DISEASE. Victim of a disease which has baffled the world's medical brains, a Hurstville Digger has "swelled head," which means not vanity, says the Daily Telegraph . Since the war, his head has grown 3H inches larger; other bones, too, have grown, and will continue to grow. Out of the world's millions his case is the twenty-fourth known, and,* strange coincidence, Alexander Stewart, who was a mooring officer at Gallipoli, where the Hurstville Digger also fought, was the twenty-third. The Digger went through Anzac Cove perils and the Somme offensive returning without a scrateh, and at Albany sought a new uniform hat. He asked for size 6 7-8; it would not fit. Neither would his new- civilian hat fit. "I went round talking about 'mad hatters'," he says. In 1927 he again asked for size 6 7-8_. This time the hatter thought him mad, for the hat had to be stretehed well over size 7. From that time began violent headaehes, and all over his limbs agonie:; like severe growing pains. He saw a doctor, but said nothing about his head. growing. "It seemed so fantastic," he explained. He turned down his city job, and went caravan dealing in the country, but after a few months returned and bought another hat. Each 1-8 in hats is half an inch, and the hat hpd now to be increased to 7i. His head had grown lh inches. He had to sell his grocery shop at a big loss because the disease was beating him. His head kept growing, and the first idea of the cause came from a local doctor, who said: "Schomberg's or Pargett's disease, I think." Hardening of the ai'teries has something to do with it. The bones become brittle, and from this the complaint is sometimes called "marblebone disease." No cause or cure is known. A wife and six bonny Australians to support, the soldier thought a pension would be unobtainable, because no doctor could say that his amazing complaint was a war disease. But just as he began to despair — his leg bones had begun to bow outward and forward,decreasing his height over 11 inches! — came a special pension. For no doctor could say that it was not a war disability. Now he is living the simple life — roaming in a earavan, fishing, sunbaking, "just lazing." But there is a wistful look in his eyes as he says: "My pains seem like those I had when I got trench fever after standing waist deep in mud — maybe that was the start."