GUARDING THE LUNGS.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1922, Page 10

GUARDING THE LUNGS.

IMPORTANCE OF THE NOSE. A simple means of combating tuberculosis was outlined by Dr. Owen Paget in an interesting paper read before the Western Australian branch of the British Medical Association. Dr. Paget has been conducting tubercular research work tor the past ten years, and has come to the conclusion that the prevention and cure of tuberculosis is possible if the nasal organisms are kept in good order. “People entirely unable to breathe through the nose must die of tuberculosis,” said Dr. Paget, “unless they die by chance or accident. People who do breathe through the nose are. for the most part, temporarily inefficient in this respect. If the inspiratory current of air passes easily and freely, however, such people will either never have tuberculosis, or their lesions will heal, probably without a scar. On the other hand, dependent on the amount of obstruction in this direction will be the severity of the lesion.” The capacity for producing anti-tuber-cular bacilli is possessed by cells in the normal inspiratory passage's of the nose, so that if the nose is kept free from obstruction and kept in good health generally, the chance of a person becoming tubercular is, according to Dr. Paget’s theory, reduced to a minimum. “Excellent results were obtained by using insufflations of dried and dead tubercle bacilli, but at the present day I employ insufflations of bacilliary emulsion,” said the doctor in explaining his researches. “This is nothing more than defid tubercle bacilli ground into infinitely fine powder by means of a special glass pestle and mortar. This is not a treatment by tuberculins. It is merely an artificial stimulation of a normal physiological function held in abeyance through anatomical faultiness.”