HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 September 1941, Page 2

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

TREATMENT OF COMMON COMPLAINTS CERE BRO-SPINAL MENINGITIS. (Prepared and issued by the Health Department.) Recent outbreaks of meningitis in the North Island draw attention to a disease that can be sudden in its onset and tragically swift in its effect. In its more severe form it calls for early and expert treatment in hospital, but a knowledge of the symptoms is often of extreme value in ensuring early treatment. Cerebro-spinal-meningitis is its full name, and it ranges in severity from the mild type—which sometimes resembles influenza and is probably often treated as such —to the fulminating type, which may kill in a day or two. Fortunately its incidence.in New Zealand is fairly low, but during a war. when there are large concentrations of men in camp, an increase'in its prevalence is definitely possible. This was shown in 1918. Chilling, bodily fatigue, and strain are among the predisposing causes. It might be mentioned that in the recent North Auckland outbreak three of the victims were employed in cool chamber work. The meningococcus (the cause of the trouble) attacks the membranes that surround the brain (meninges), by infection through the nose, spreading directly through lymph vessels to the members or else by the blood stream. Inflammation of the brain occurs. The germ finds its way into the spinal fluid and it is by testing a sample of this that doctors confirm their diagnoses. They rely on several unmistakable symptoms: A violent headache, rapid rise in temperature (to as much as 102 and 104 on the first day), rigidity of the neck and sometimes the leg muscles, nausea, and vomiting. Ir some cases skin blisters appear on the face. In infants, stiffness of the neck muscles is seldom marked in the early stages, and the slightest degree of rigidity in the neck is therefore significant. A new drug, sulphapyridine —which is also used to combat pneumonia—if now used with good results, provided it is administered early enough. The most the average person can de is to get medical advice when the characteristic signs appear. The modern hospital has every facility foi treating meningitis cases, and the new drug has proved a great boon. Recovery from a severe attack, using the new drug early, is usually dramatic.