"CUM GRANO"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 329, 12 October 1945, Page 5

"CUM GRANO"

Sir-The comment made by the Director General of Health on A. R: D. Fairburn’s query regarding the use of iodised salt will have helped neither Mr. Fairburn nor any other of your readers. One does not need to be a "medical pracy titioner" in order to understand plain English, and I daresay that the Director General himself will find, the following quotation from Dr: Pulay’s Allergic Man (Muller, 1942) sufficiently unambiguous: "An indiscriminate administration of iodised salt is therefore to be deplored, as not infrequently the continued administration of even minute doses may lead to iodism and give rise to the symptoms of thyroid intoxication."’ (p. 26.) « In my book Nutrition I made no mention of iodised salt, because iodine can be and should be taken in an organic form as part of a normal diet, and, unlike the Director General, I am not prepared to take the responsibility of recommending something which might, in however small a number of cases, lead to all those distresses which are involved in toxic goitre.

GUY B

CHAPMAN

(Titirangi). .

_ Sir-Inspired by the advertisement of the Health Department, and suspecting a slight tendency to goitre in my adolescent ‘child, I took him to a doctor who prescribed a daily. dose of a colourless iodine concentrate and the exclusive use of iodised salt. Ten months later I took the child to a specialist for a check-up. The specialist is an intelligent, conscientious, well-experienced man. He agreed there was a recognisable tendehcy to goitre, although the condition was not yet dangerous, but he warned me that, this being so, I must carefully refrain from using any form of iodine in the diet, cut out the use of iodised salt, and even abstain from using iodine tincture on the skin. ‘I was told that iodine administered prophylactically is useful, but once the thyroid is involved in any disorder it’ serves only to emphasise the symptoms of the disease. It was also pointed out to me that New Zealand’s foremost goitre specialist and surgeon concurs in this opinion. Reviewing DrChapman’s book in a recent issue of. The Listener Dr. Blanc, from the lofty heights of his B.M.A. degree, called the iodised salt treatment "a measure which has found world-wide approval." At various times I have seen references to qa school of medical thought which admits organic forms of iodine, but denies any curative properties for inorganic forms. For the perplexed layman there seem to be two alternatives. We must sink back into illiteracy and suppress our reasoning faculties, so that we may cultivate the unquestioning faith demanded of us by the medical fraternity, or we shall humbly suggest to these privileged citizens that they

pool their experience and _ learning, accept the idea that they are fallible, and try so to organise their lives that they have some free time in which to keep abreast of recent medical thought.

G.E.

S.

(Auckland).