Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1911. CURE FOR CONSUMPTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10268, 21 June 1911, Page 4

Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1911. CURE FOR CONSUMPTION.

Possibly ; there is" no disease i which lias such ,a hold of the- people of New .Zealand as tuberculosis, tyr. oonsumiption. Many and ■■varied attempts have been made to cope with it, but only with partial success. It is interesting, therefore, to gleaai some particulars of the. work which is being done in connection with the Bromptoni Hospital for Consumptives. The chief feature of the treatment is based on the curative'effects of graduated labour, and each year the results obtained by this system are more and more encouraging. A very great advance was made in the methods of treating tuberculosis of the lungs, when it was found that patients undergoing "open-air" treatment made better progpftM wlien they had to do a certain amount,of work each day than when (they led more, or less aimless lives, and.i.sincQ practical use has been made of this observation increasing experience has enabled a systematic table of work, suitable for different stages of the disease, to be drawn, up. At the Fi'imiley Sanatorium work for patients, is divided into six grades, varying from the lightest labour given to thoise wlho are unfitted for, active exercise—dn the form of sewing, making mats and mops, or similar occupations—to the really heavy work of trenching, mixing concrete, and felling trees. Short walks are considered to he light labour for" 'tihose who can get about, and are followed, as progress is

made, by such easy garden employment as picking tip wood, carrying baskets of mould, and watering plants. From these occupations patients are gi-adually led on to the heavier tasks of using a .small .shovel, gr a sisr shears, or a light hoe, eventually progressing to the still more streimious work of digging broken ground and mowing lawns. When, after the most careful regulation of his work, a patient attains tJie. ambitious post of a feller of 'trees, the completion of his "cure" is well withim sight, It might perhaps be thought Svat tiie heavier work just mentioned is not really undertaken by the sanatorium inmates in the same way that it would be"ff they were working for a livelihood; it is a little difficult to realise that a band of invalids could really make m/uch headway with the more onerous tasks enumerated. But, as a matter of fact, those who have successfully passed through the lighter grade* of work at Frimley certainly, do carry out the later stages of hard physical labour without any shirking, and with the. greatest benefit to their health. Of course, the, women have to work as well as the men, and in similar grades, although the various implements used (baskets-, .shovels, and so forth) are of smaller size; they are not allowed to work as hard as the men;' but nevertheless, manage to keep in, order their own-part of the grounds, cultivate a small kitchen garden, and look' after the poultry runs. „. When they get to the most advanced stage of work, the women patients are occupied with scrubbing, which in their case is made to correspond with tine hard navvy work done by the men in the final stages of their "cure." As a rule, patients work about four and a half hours a day at Erimley, and before they are considered fit to be discharged, ars put to work at their customary trade or occupation for six hours a day for three weeks. Such, in brief, are the principles of a system which is able to show 192 oases of "complete aii-rest" of the disease, and 195 cases of very considerable' improvement out of 419 consumptive patients treated by it during the past year. Omitting 67 cases in which the report indicates only moderate improvement, one finds that 330 out of 419—that is nearly 80 per cent, of the patients treated—received very great benefit from this "work cure," whilst just over 45 per cent, appear to have been "cured," so far as one can apply that term to so uncertain, a disease as consumption.