CURE FOR EVERY ILL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 900, 18 February 1930, Page 14

CURE FOR EVERY ILL

SPANISH DOCTOR’S CLAIM MUSSOLINI’S OPINION Can sciatica, general paralysis, deafness, and a variety of other ills, including infectious fevers, be cured by cauterising or otherwise stimulating the trigeminal nerve of the nose? Dr. Asuero, the Spanish physician who has just been making a sensational •tour of Italy, says that they can. The Italian medical faculty are equally positive in declaring that they can’t. Patients who in large numbers have submitted their noses to the new treatment are divided in -their views. Some few, including a lady of Parma' who had been paralysed for S 3 years, have literally got up and walked; others have derived some temporary benefit; others again, while admitting that they experienced a momentary sense of well-being (“like a current of heat passing -through my whole body,” said one girl) confess that they have paid the fee of one thousand lire in vain (says the Rome correspondent of the London “Observer”). The hotels in Rome, Naples and Florence, where Asuero set up his tent in succession, were besieged by such crowds of sick people that the police had to be called in to regulate tbe traffic, while the door of the con-sulting-room was guarded by two stalwart waiters. “All diseases,” the doctor says, “have the same origin, and therefore all diseases can be cured by the same treatment. The general cause of illness lies in a disturbance of the circulation brought about by some minute obstruction, organic, muscular or nervous, In some part of The body. My treatment consists in eliminating this disturbance by inducing a reflex action, with partial or -total results. Cauterisation of the trigeminal nerve —an operation of elementary simplicity is only a means of producing the necessary reaction. My scientific gospel may be summed up in these words: no more hospitals, no more specifics, no more recipes, no more clinics, no more laboratories. The •trigeminal nerve holds the secret of all cures, and a surgical instrument applied to the nerve acts like a panacea.” The Spanish doctor’s apparatus is as simple as his theory. It consists of a spirit lamp, a speculum to keep the nostrils open, and a small specillum or surgical probe for the operation. He works with extreme rapidity, causing apparently a mmimiim of pain, and in cases where he has been successful, patients, who hobbled into the room cripped with sciatica, have run down the stairs a quarter of an hour later, rejoicing in a miracle. The Medical Syndicate of Rome begged Dr. Asuero to make some scientific explanation of his system, and to subject his experiments to a medical board of control. He declined to meet their wishes saying that he is preparing full statements for the International Medical Congress, which is to be held in Spain (at San Sebas-* tian) within the next three months, after which he will publish a book on the subject. Dr. Asuero has now left Italy, but questions have been asked in Parliament as to the advisability of preventing medical men - especially foreigners—from exercising their profession without any control, and bv means calculated to mislead the public. Signor Mussolini, answering in the Senate, said that so far as he could make out, no one had suffered from Dr. Asuero’s ministrations except In then- pockets. “The doctor,” he continued, “says that his treatment is a panacea for every ill. This brings it into the sphere of miracles and I wish to state positively that, while the medical profession comes under -the Ministry of the Interior, I claim no jurisdiction in the realm of miracles.”