INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 April 1916, Page 6

INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

'A SUGGESTED PREVENTIVE. Mr. J. E. Stewart writes to the Wanganui Chronicle: —As a preventive measure, though possibly not a cure, for infantile paralysis, I write to suggest a regular course of massage treatment. It merely costs a few minutes of attention morning and evening, save the trifling expense of a fairly rough towel or similar rubber. No kind of embrocation should be used, as it will minimise the bf.nefit caused by the rough surface of the towel in contact with the skin. Massage was employed by the Chinese some hundreds of years before it became known to the Western world, and it is significant that it is still largely employed by the Chinese, who are not the -kind of people to waste hours—let alone centuries —in experimenting with a failure. It occurred to me that there is a remarkable, affinity between this dreadful epidemic of infantile paralysis and the plague of blackleg, which was sc prevalent among the cattle in many parts of Taranaki a few years ago. It was no uncommon thing to see several young cattle lying dying, side by'side, with legs outstretched, stiff and straight, and heads thrown back: but a remarkable thing was that the victims' eyes preserved their brightness, and seemed to notice what occurred near at hand. up to within a very short time of death. This disease' was as everyone knows, treated successfully, and has prael'eaily disappeared, as far as cattle are concerned; but it is very probable that the germ-laden soil of the localities wiuve blackleg caused, so much trouble has liecome micro-organism (or whatever may be the technical term applicable to those horrors) subsisted, and tliey have now attacked the human body. Inoculation in some mysterious way. which thos.> outside the medical circles have difficulty in understanding, seems to bave afforded immunity to onr cattle against the attack of this fell discasc.'lmt if the trouble: is by these means diverted to our children, then the necessity for energcf'.e and immediate action is immeasurably greater. 1 have no books to which 1 can refer, but I have always understood that anthrax and black-lea arc in many respects similar, though the latter is less deadly and more easily eradicated. In dealing with the few cases of anthrax that have been identified in Xew Zealand, the authorities have insisted on very exhaustive measures being employed to obviate the disease spreading, but in black-leg these precautions have not been insisted on ,and as the question as to whether tho disease was anthrax or black-leg has been often left to the owner to decide, the infected beast has been covered with a thin layer of earth andprobably scooped off by a hungry cur within a few hours. Why should some of these cases not have been the deadlier disease? With infantile paralysis the complaint has, so far, attacked only the young. The patient loses the use of bis, or her, limbs, and the progress of the disease is appallingly rapid, and almost invariably fatal, hi writing of the eyes of the young beasts remaining bright and the animal evidently being conscious of happenings near to it, I am relating my own experiences, but the experience of others may vary. It will be interesting to know if the patient suffering from infantile paralysis also exhibits those symptoms. If so, it will also be extremely interesting to learn if the lives of our young folk can be also fortified by innoculation against this deadly plague.