“MOSQUITO CURE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 252, 14 January 1928, Page 14

“MOSQUITO CURE”

BATTLE OF BLOOD PARASITES A MEDICAL TRIUMPH The “mosquito cure” of locomotor ataxia, which seems to have caused so much astonishment when it was. explained in the Lambeth Coroner’s Court (in this case the cure killed the patient, by the way), is not very new to the medical profession, says a medical writer in the “Daily Chronicle.” It hails originally from Vienna, and has now proved itself up to the hilt in every, civilised country. But though it is not new, it fully merits the adjective “miraculous” which the medical witness applied to it in court. And it must appear far more miraculous to the medical profession than to the laity.

If, 10 years ago, any responsible group of medical men had been asked to name two diseases which were essentially and in their very nature hopelessly incurable, the reply would almost certanily have been locomotor ataxia and general paralysis of the insane. The two are in reality different manifestations of the same disease; in the one the spinal cord is at-

tacked, in the other the brain. Hitherto it has been believed that the symptoms in each case were due to a degeneration of nerve fibres of such a nature as to preclude any possibility of rehabilitation —a death, in fact, of yital nerve tissue. This belief has been strengthened by every advance in microscopical technique and che nical analysis. Exploded Beliefs The “mosquito cure” explodes the whole of this apparently solid masonry. The above-mentioned diseases were known to be due to a blood parasite called a spirochoete, not to his present activities, but to a degeneration due to former activities long since arrested. It now appears that the introduction into the circulation of another blood parasite, the malarial, will not only kill the spirachoete, but will actually clear up the mess he has made in the nervous system. It may bo objected that malaria is a serious disease, which of itself often kills. That is perfectly true, but inasmuch as malaria in certainly 90 per cent, of the cases is readily and surely controllable by the harmless drug called quinine, the danger of inoculation is very slight, and where success means the cure of such horrible and deadly diseases as hopeless insanity and incurable paralysis, thfe risk is more than justifiable. Altogether, then, the “mosquito cure” may claim to be one of the most beneficient as well as one of the most striking of the many advances in_ medical knowledge and technique 'which the present generation has witnessed.