LIFE IN JAPAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 July 1943, Page 3

LIFE IN JAPAN

VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS DISEASE PREVALENT. UNHYGIENIC FOOD CONDITIONS. "Two Weeks in a Japanese Hospital," was the title of an address given at the weekly luncheon meeting of the Masterton Rotary Club today by Second Lieutenant Keith E. D. Robertson, who before the war spent some years in Japan. Lieutenant Robertson said the impression he got during his stay in Japan was that the nation was riddled with disease. An exception was the service men, who were provided with the best food and clothing procurable. He had heard a student speaking on the health of the nation speak of 1.500.000 registered sufferers of tuberculosis. Unregistered cases were as numerous as those registered. Seventy per cent of the tuberculosis cases were among the student class. The probable causes were the long hours of study, intense military training, poor food and clothing, a general lack of understanding of the dangers from dampness, and fondness of frequent hot baths, after which, they cooled off on their way home, with the result that pneumonia, tubersulosis, etc., were often contracted. Tuberculosis ranked in seventh place in deaths by disease. One in three of the population were affected by immoral living and a similar proportion, he believed, suffered with poor eyesight. Glasses were mostly selected by a customer, without any professional help. There was no real segregation of those suffering from leprosy, etc. Food in Japan was grown and sold under the most unhygienic conditions. It was grown largely with the use of nightsoil, which comprised 80 per cent of the fertiliser used by them. Because of this, stomach worms were very prevalent and the “worm medicine man" was very popular. Vegetables were also washed in filthy streams,

Referring to his own experiences when he contracted yellow jaundice. Lieutenant Robertson said he was a patient in a large private hospital. The secretary of the hospital, when a patient was admitted, communicated by telephone with the Trained Attendants' Association. Every patient was cared for by one of these attendants, apart from the medical and surgical work of the nurses. In his case, the attendant knew as much English as he did Japanese and spent most of his: time looking up the English dictionaries. The name. Room No. 4, in Japanese hospitals had the same sound as “shi” for death, and room No. 4 was really the death chamber. There were restaurants in all the large hospitals. The patients’ food was cooked upstairs and the washing was also done in the building and hung out on the roof area to dry.