DYING ON THEIR FEET.

Taihape Daily Times, 24 September 1919, Page 5

DYING ON THEIR FEET.

WAR MISERY IN AUSTRIA. CHI-LDI-ZEN STUNTED IN MIND AND BODY. Dr. Ethel Williams, 3. Newcastle doetor of thirty years’ experience, recently returned to England from Vienna. She attoinded the Women’s Interna.tion;al Conference at Zurich, where she heard so much about the conditions of disease in Austria that she decided to see for herself what those conditions really were. She spent a wee}; in Vienna. visiting the hospitals and the school kitchens, studying medical statistics, interviewing representative people, and ,_-wing as much as she could of the child-life of the city. Speaking to a M:-J.ilellestel' Guardian representative, she said:——

“What impressed me most was the appalling condition of every old person I saw, and of 95 per cent of the children. The old people were like walking deat-h’s. heads_ There are so many things that persons over sixty cannot. digest. The mortality among the old has increased by 150 per cent.

“What struck me most when walking about the streets was that there were no toddlers. Children of three and even four years were carried by their mothers. The children did not run about, or shout, or quarrel. It was four days before I saw a child playing. At least 95 per cent. of the practically well children were painfully emaciated, with discolourcd circles about their sunken eyes, and the tendons of Hieir necks, showing like those of old people. Even middle-class childrerfhave these scrawny necks, and when they run their cheeks flap like those of.old people. But they seldom man. They are all limp and listless. “The scene in the out~patient’s department at the biggest State children’s hospital was pitiful—no sound or attempt. to play. The children sat quietly on their mothers’ knees or against. a. wall. One "mother had brought her three little girls, all 0 fhtem tubercular. I talked to her, _ “ ‘I don’-t know how this happened,’ she burst out. ‘They just had little colds, but theyfve got over them before, and now the terrible thing’ has happened. I suppose it is‘ just the war misery———using the common term,’ “I saw several cases of osefo-rnala-chia, a. disease so rare before the war that the onlyfitwo cases I had ever seen had been shown to me as a. curiosity. It seems to come fromplack -of fresh food, and there have’ -been 250 cases in Vienna. and I heard of another epidemic in a German town. “The bones soften and become distorted, the pelvis bones fold inward. In early stages it is cur.a.ble, but 9, bad case never will walk again, rand a rather bad case always will have difliculty in walking, while a woman who has it will always swfler terribly in childbirth. “The cases were -those of older children and -adults. They told me that the hospitals were receiving about fifteen cases a day. and nthose they had to turn away inevitably became much ‘WOISE. I used to test the condition ,of the children I saw by feeling their fleshless arms. When I -touched one child the father said: ‘D—on’t. touch him, he has this had new disease, and it hurts -him so much.’ I realised that I had to hurt him, but the child was too listless to shrink from the pain. ’ “The doctors could do practically nothing for .the- outpatients, who would not be taken into the hospitals. The mothers were in despair. The doctors said the greatest want of all was for cod liver oil. ' Fund; raised in England had sent a* supply. but it only lasted two days. Practically every child under two is rickety. Statistics show children who should be gaining weight in the year losing weight intsead.”