LIME DUST THERAPY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1938, Page 5

LIME DUST THERAPY

WORKERS NEVER CONTRACT TUBERCULOSIS. DISEASE INCIDENCE REDUCED. The astounding fact that workers in the lime industry seldom or almost never suffer from 'tuberculosis may not be generally known, writes Professor Ludwig Fahn-Wiesbaden in “Volk and Welt,” Hanover. But experience has shown that the inhalation of lime dust reduces the incidence of lung diseases. And though the exploitation of this knowledge is only gradually coming into popular effect, the possibilities of lime dust therapy were discussed as long as 50 years ago. About the beginning of the century I sent inquiries about the subject to various people in a position to know the facts. The owner of a plastering works informed me that no one in his employ was afflicted with tuberculosis. A stonecutter who had been active in his vocation for half a century, and had in that time educated over 100 young apprentices to the trade, wrote me in the same vein. Pale, sickly, emaciated youths, he said, even those whose condition was due to heredity, became perfectly healthy again after some years of apprenticeship. This man’s information applied to more than 500 workers. Equally significant was his statement that Stone-cutters who worked with water (thus precluding the creation of lime dust) remained sickly. . The evidence of statistics is not less striking. Numerous bulletins published by the owners and directors of large lime works, together with doctors figures, substantiate our theory. One such report reads: “In a period of 10 years, of the 432 cases of illness among the workers in our plant not one was a case of tuberculosis, inflammation of the lungs, primary catarrh,, or pneumonia, and only three were of acute bronchial catarrh. Thus the wholly favourable therapeutic effects of the inhalation of lime dust are patent.” The question now arises: In what manner, and in what composition, can the lime dust be most effectively given to the patient. A good many years of experimentation and research were necessary before the Lex-Zehen method was discovered and proven satisfactory. It consisted of a mixtuie of sulphur and calcium which revealed both curative and preventive •properties. It has been used in German sanatoria with good results. Two important facts deserve emphasis. First, there has never, according to X-ray observation, been a case of “dust-lung" in a person who has once been cured by this method: and second, the therapy can be carried on under a doctor’s orders without disturbing ones daily occupation.