USE OF NEW DRUGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 669, 2 May 1952, Page 5

USE OF NEW DRUGS

Sir,-I was particularly interested in the letter to you under the above heading from an Auckland correspondent and also in the comments made thereon by the Deputy Director General of the Department of Health. A member of my family spent several weeks in hospital followed by many weeks at home under private medica! attention with acute dermatitis owing to the external’ use of penicillin and the sulpha drugs, given and used under medical direction. Dr. Turbott’s statemeént "the public are already tending’ to keep on their shelves these modern drugs and are using them apart from medical advice" does not go far enough, Too many people become hospital inmates, followed by long months of incapacity at home, due to the use of these drugs by medical practitioners who seem to regard them as an easy panacea for all ills, internal and external. Yet I am given to understand: that a simple medical test on the skin would advise the medical practitioner if the patient were allergic to these drugs. But, of course, in these days there does not seem to be the time for making such a test. The patient is ultimately in such a state of hypersensitivity and nervous irritability that the convalescent stage is a protracted one and during that period and even afterwards I understand that the painful reactions can reoccur from the ordinary activities in the home and in the garden. I would add to what has been said by our Auckland correspondent that there s too much rush today in medical prac-

tice,

DISTRESSED

(Wellington),