RHUBARB AND THE HUMAN BODY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 42

RHUBARB AND THE HUMAN BODY

(By DR

H. B.

TURBOTT

Director of the Division

of School Hygiene, Health Department )

N the sixth century there was a | much travelled doctor, Alexander of Tralles, who finally settled down to practice in Rome. His brother was the architect of St. Sophia at Istan-

bul (Constantinople). This doctor sought new and better treatments for worms, troublesome then as now, and was the first to mention rhubarb as an aperient. In the twelfth century the court physician to Saladin wrote a little book on personal hygiene for his ruler, in which was included the use of a rhubarb and tamarind pill. We don’t hear much more about rhubarb until Queen Elizabeth’s time, when rhubarb leaves were used as a potherb and considered superior to spinach or beet. In our time rhubarb has a _ recognised usefulness both as a medicine and as a foodstuff. From the rhubarb plant, chemists prepare powders, fluid extracts, tinctures and pills. These are all used in modern medicine as purgatives. While they act very well indeed in most people, some folk get upset with them, feeling headachy or sick, or coming out in a skin trash. However a compound rhubarb powder was very much favoured by our grandmothers, and did good work for them. It was a rival of senna of which the taste alone upset us as children. The Stalks Are Quite Safe You and I grow rhubarb in our vegetable gardens, using the stalks as a

cooked fruit. It is very acceptable in the spring time before the flush of garden products occurs. Some people cook rhubarb leaves as a vegetable. It -is probably wiser not to do this. Rhubarb leaves contain a good deal of oxalic acid and a few cases of oxalic acid poisoning are recorded from eating them as a vegetable. There is less oxalic acid in the stalks and they are perfectly safe. Some few people, however, get upset by rhubarb as a food, just as some folk can’t take it as a medicine. Quite a few plants and roots, when eaten, can in sensitive people, cause skin rashes or digestive upsets with abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea. Mushrooms, strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, rhubarb, brazil nuts are more commonly implicated. In certain very sensitive folk ordinary foodstuffs, such as oatmeal, egg, shellfish, and pork, may be the cause of a skin rash. The common type of rash has a long name, urticaria. It begins as whitish, flattened, raised lumps or weals, with surrounding redness and marked itchiness. They may appear in one place, last a few hours, then disappear to recur in another. Occasionally a food rash may be something like a scarlet fever rash-a pinpoint redness covering some part of the body-or at other times appear as an eczema. Some Are Upset Now rhubarb, more rarely than some of the others mentioned above, can upset some people. The itchy, weal type of rash is best treated by a simple lotion, such as calamine lotion, applied (Continued on next page)

RHUBARB

(Continued from previous page) to the affected area. The only satisfactory way to avoid any of the upsets caused by plants and foods in certain sensitive people is to discover the food that causes the symptoms and avoid it. This can be done in two ways-by your doctor, through skin tests; or by yourself, through cutting out the suspected food and being free of attacks, then trying the incriminated food again, having a new attack and thus clinching the culprit, So, if you fancy rhubarb upsets you, try out this elimination game and prove or disprove your theory. Similarly you can discover any other sus-pect-strawberries and raspberries will soon be here, and they upset more people than rhubarb does. The seasonal occurrence of the foodstuffs often gives you a direct clue to discovery of sensitiveness. Please-average man and womankeep on eating rhubarb, strawberries, mushrooms, etc. unless you have found by trial you are not average and these or other common good foods upset you. (Next week: "Food for the Expectant and Nursing Mother," by Dr, Muriel Bell)