INFORMING THE PUBLIC.

Taihape Daily Times, 9 June 1919, Page 4

INFORMING THE PUBLIC.

The Minister of Public Health has ordered that a leaflet on Lethargic Encephalitis be freely distributed for public information. We have received a copy of this illuminating leaflet, and it has made us wonder wliether the whole Government, and particularly the Health Department, is not down with this awful disease, the very name of which is enough to kill some nervously inclined people, We have books at hand which enable us 'to,ideAcipllcr all the broken English and dog Latin which comes to hand, but when the Department sets out. to enlighten the public generally it should surely adopt language that the public generally can readily understand. This leaflet, or Bulletin No. l, on Lethargic Encepha-. litis gives most lucid details so that common people may know when they are infected themselves, or may understand whether others they come into contact with are affected. It points out that diagnosis may be diflicult, and we should think it would -be from the common sense Ch_aractc_ristics of the complaint given. It says. “The fl'e~ quency of ptosis, paralysis of the ocular muscles, diplopia, facial paralysis, and ocular inco-ordination are the cranial nerve signs; optic neuritis does not occur save in very occasional cases_” But there is a great difficulty in deciding that it is not something else altogether, and the officers of the Department have our. entire sympathy. We made an inexcusable blunder in diagnosis on Saturday, notwithstanding our having read the instructions given in BullctinVN_o. 1- Satlll‘d€lY was a cold day,:and we came to the conclusion that two individuals would not be lying full length on the roadside for over an hour unless Lethargic Encephalitis had overtaken them. We made observations and there, all right we found what. appeared to be paralysis of’ the ocular muscles; we failed to determine with exactitude whether ocular inco-ordination was Dl‘CSoll’f~, 31" though there were indications that both subjects were Seeing double. which originated the thought that something was wrong With the Clmlial nerves. There was the usual ineo—hercncy of utterance, and there seem; ed little reason to doubt a definite syndrome, charact'criscd by stupor or coma, but not progressive. as -both subjects appeared to have safely negotiated the crisis. We failed to discover cerebral poliomyelitis, on the other -hand, there were unmistakable Signs Of 501119 kind of “dip”; either “diplopia” or "myteodcepia.” We decided it was the lat tor and diagnosed the disease as Lethargica Drinkititis. We apologise to our readers for inflicting this nonsense upon them, but when the Health Dcpartement sets out -to give information to the public it would be more successful if bad Latin and hybrid G)l‘Col{ were replaced with plain English.