HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1943, Page 6

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

ANOTHER FALLACY FALLS CAUSE OF TUBERCULOSIS A GERM (By the Department of Health) In the light of modern health education, people are beginning to take a more intelligent interest in their own personal well-being, and fallacies that have been strongly entrenched for years are tumbling by the wayside. Remember the days when people used to talk about “consumption,” that terrible “family disease” that was thought to be inherited? Today it is known as tuberculosis, and people know—or they should know—that it is caused by a germ, just like the host of other infectious diseases. It is still a terrible disease, and it is still far too prevalent in New Zealand. Most of us in the adult stage have been infected with the tuberculosis germs, but our body resistance has possibly killed them—either that, or the body and germs live together in a state of balance, with the germs safely sealed in nodules in the lungs. Many of the cases in New Zealand especially in the adolescent years have been caused from within the body. Resistance has been lowered, possibly through severe influenza, pneumonia, measles, or pleurisy, etc., or possibly, again, through wrong living and the germs have broken out. Wrong feeding, insufficient rest, short sleep, overwork. worry, and the habit of burning the candle at both ends, particularly between the ages of 15 and 25 (the susceptible years for tuberculosis) lower the resistance, and those lurking germs become active. Sound nutrition and sensible living will keep those germs in a safe place.