AN ARCTIC REGIMEN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10008, 2 April 1910, Page 4

AN ARCTIC REGIMEN.

When the last mail left England, an extremely interesting experiment in the treatment of the tropical disease known as sleeping sickness was being carried out at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. The 'subject of the experiment is a young Cumberland mining prospector, who contracted the dread malady in Northe-n Rhodesia about six months ago. The cause of sleeping sickness is a microscopic organism that gains access to the blood through the sting lof a tsetse fly, ana its chief symptoms are continuous drowsiness and lassitude and pains in the limbs. The method of cure being experimented with is making the patient sit for hours at a time in a temperature (hat is 10 degrees helow freezing point. In a plainly furnish,ed room, supplied with a table, a deck chair, and electric light, and having ice coll air forced through it the victim of this tropical disease passes as long aa six hours at a stretch, reading or watching the dozen caged animals that are also undergoing the refrigerator cure. The patient, when not taking this new form of rest cure, is subjected to the ordinary treatment by atoxyl at the Royal Southern Hospital. His companions in misfortune include a guinea-pig suffering from tetanus, two mice suffering from cancer, two guinea-pigs suffering from tuberculosis, one guinea pig suffering from sleeping sickness, one guinea pie suffering from ts3tse disease, and two rats suffering from dourine, an Algerian horse disease. In conversation with a newspaper I representative the patient who is undergoing this Arctic regimen, stated that his condition had improved since he began the treatment, the chief symptoms having become much less ' pronounced. Though he is not particularly heavily dressed, the only part of him that gets really • cold is his hands when he holds a book to read it. If he puts his hands in his pockets to warm them, he must lay down the book, and before he knows it he is asleep. He does not find the animals interesting to watch, as they sleep- most uf the time. Once he caught cold, though it was not in the refrigerator, but while walking home one night after treatment. I The theory of the experiment is that ; the constant dry cold raises the vitalj ity and this increases the natural ! immunity against germ attacks, and ! helps the sufferer to throw off the disease. If the method should prove successful, it would mean the estabi I lishment of refrigerators at European stations in tropical countries in which j victims could be placed in the early i stages of the disease.