30,000 DIE EACH YEAR FROM RHEUMATISM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18055, 15 January 1927, Page 9

30,000 DIE EACH YEAR FROM RHEUMATISM.

(Special to the " Star.”) LONDON, November 23. Addressing the Royal Sanitary Institute meeting at Colchester yesterday. Dr R. 11. Vercoe, medical officer of Chelmsford, revealed that on the lowest estimate, in England and Wabs 50,000 children in elementary schools are partly or wholly crippled by rheumatic heart disease, and their lives definitely ih eatened. Against these figures, at Eton College, in seventeen years, only one case of rheumatci fever occurred. Ali best authorities agreed that half the deaths from heart disease were due to rheumatic infection, acute or subacute, which meant that 30,000 deaths in England and Wales were due to rheumatic heart disease. Red Hot Iron Remedy. A chronic form of rheumatism in the joints of our Anglo-Saxon forefather*, was found by examining skeletons. Red Hot Iron was then a drastic form of treatment which would not appeal to sufferers to-day. Heredity seemed to be the most important cause; dampness of a ho-jse came next; and age was very important. i here were three times as many cases among children aged 12 as ami'ng children aged five. Rheumatic heart disease war, very little found in upper or middle-classes or in the slums, but was very prevalent m a rt isan classes. It was lour.d very seldom in rural areas, but very much ui towns, and especially in industrial