MUMPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 December 1938, Page 8

MUMPS

CAUSED BY POISON. SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENT. Around the mouth are three pairs of glands whose office it is to secrete saliva in great or small amounts in accordance with the varying needs of the body’s organisation. It is through '.heir agency that mouths water with greed or go dry with terror. Mumps attack one or more of these glands, but more especially the pair That lie immediately behind the angles of the jaw. These are the. parotid glands, and so the other name for mumps is epidemic parotitis. It is an extremely infectious disease, the cause of which is not a germ, but an animal poison known as a virus: and because the virus of mumps is of so fine a fabric that it will pass through the meshes of the most efficient filter, it is called a “ filterable virus. When this virus gains its entry it is dormant for from 14 to 22 days before symptoms appear. This dormant interval between the acquirement by the body of an infection, either by germ or by virus, and the onset of symptoms is known as the incubation period. The first symptom of mumps is soreness just behind the angle of the jaw. Soon- the parotid gland swells, and there is general malaise and fever. In. due course the parotid on the ether side becomes sore and swollen. After a few days the swollen gland diminishes in size and returns to normal and the patient recovers. It is desirable to keep him isolated for seven days after symptoms have disappeared. Sometimes the parotid is spared and ohe or more of the other salivary glands are affected. Sometimes the virus attacks glands in other parts of the body. These other glands may be the only seat of the disease, but more often they are assailed when the parotid symptoms have subsided. Complications are rare. Middle ear infections and inflammation of the brain (Enlephalitis* are not unknown. Treatment is limited to the relief of pain and malaise by heat applied to the swollen glands and by rest in bed. All ages from two years upwards are susceptible to mumps but it is most common from five years to 15 years. One attack generally confers a life-long immunity, but second attacks are not impossible. In describing mumps it has been necessary to mention Viruses, but mUmps is not the only disease that has a virus as its cause. Infantile paralysis, smallpox, measles, shingles, and perhaps influenza are also virus diseases.

It is a matter of dispute among scientists whether a virus is a living thing. Some say that because a virus multiplies itself, therefore it is alive; others, that it can survive heating and other ill-treatments which kill most living Organisms; and further that it does not consume oxygen. There is reason to believe that a virus can multiply itself only in the presence of living tissue, sb that it only lives in a metaphorical sense.