MEDICAL.
Septemdecim.—Probably you will go on growing for five years longer. Besides which 5 feet 4 inches is not so very short for a woman. It is a very good medium height. It is extremely probable that you will put on another couple of inches, and that in a few years you will be writing to ask us how to get shorter.
Miserable.—You are quite right in ascribing a purely mental cause for your trouble. Blushing is almost always due to mental and not to physical causes. The form that your complaint takes is one of the commonest we have to deal with. As the cause is purely mental, so the treatment must be solely a matter of mental education. A short time ago we published an article on blushing, dealing especially with the kind of blushing from which you suffer. In that article we gave suggestions for the suppression of self-consciousness—the factor par excellence of the commoner varieties of blushing and nervousness.
Enigma.—There is no such disease as “gastric fever.” This name used to be given to various forms of slight fever accompanied with symptoms referable to the stomach or bowels. Most cases of “gastric fever” were, in reality, mild attacks of typhoid fever. Acute indigestion was also not infrequently labelled gastric fever—an inappropriate term, for in acute indigestion there is practically no fever. The term “gastric fever” is not now used by medical men.
Lal.—The symptoms that you detail to us are capable of many explanations. The two most definite and important signs are occasional blood-spitting and shortness of breath when going up a hill. Are you sure that you do cough up blood? Most probably your troubles are simply due to chronic catarrh of the throat, but they may be dependent upon some mischief in the chest. Anyhow, you should have your chest examined before doing anything else.
Dyspeptic.—The bismuth lozenge of the British Pharmacopœia contains two grains of subnitrate of bismuth, precipitated chalk, and carbonate of magnesia, together with mucilage, etc. It is very useful for indigestion, especially when there is a tendency to vomiting. The great use of these lozenges lies in the ease with which they can be carried about. When there is no tendency to sickness, lozenges of bicarbonate of soda or soda-mint are preferable to bismuth lozenges.
Seeking Advice.—The “small pimples” on your face are manifestations of acne. We have so frequently discussed this trouble that we cannot again enter into a full description of its cause and cure. Wash your face with warm water and sulphur soap, and every evening apply sulphur ointment to the place where the pimples are most numerous. Wash away the ointment in the morning and squeeze out a few of the most prominent spots. You are at the age for acne, but with a little care you are not likely to be troubled for long with it. For your hands, wash in warm water and use sulphur soap. Always wear thick gloves when you go out. We published a small article on the care of the hands some few weeks ago.
Scotch Lassie.—Your trouble is due either to indigestion or to anæmia, or to nervousness, or possibly to disease of the heart. Without examining your chest it is beyond the power of any mortal to say which of these various affections is troubling you. Our advice is, therefore, go to your doctor and have your chest examined. You may be disappointed with this curt reply, but it is far more valuable advice than you imagine.
Teething.—There are four wisdom teeth. One on each side of both upper and lower jaws. They are called wisdom teeth because they do not develop until mature years. The first to appear is usually the one in the right side of the lower jaw. This usually appears between the ages of twenty and twenty-two. The wisdom teeth develop in nearly everybody, not only in those who are wise. Nor does the early appearance of the teeth indicate superior mental powers. Indeed, savages and idiots usually have the best teeth. Sometimes they do decay very soon, but very often they remain as sound serviceable teeth until the end.
A Lover of Dancing.—A large vein in the leg is not necessarily a varicose vein, but most probably it is so or will become so in time. A varicose vein is a diseased vein. It is very common, indeed, to have varicose veins in one leg only. If so the left leg is the more commonly affected. Is it your left leg which is affected? Exercise in the form of dancing for a few minutes every morning would be distinctly good for varicose veins. It is standing and sitting which are bad. The best thing for you to do is to get an elastic stocking for the leg. Let the stocking be one or two inches higher than the highest point where the vein extends. If you wear an elastic stocking, varicose veins are not dangerous, but if they are left untreated they cause very serious troubles.
Mona.—Have the tooth removed. Teeth growing out of place are quite useless, and are ugly and uncomfortable. No. The condition is not at all uncommon.
Anxious Mother.—The question of the causation of tuberculosis by milk is the most important question in modern preventive medicine; for not only is tuberculosis the most common and most fatal disease of man, but milk is the staple food of infancy and sickness—the two states in which we are most prone to harbour germs of this terrible malady. To the public mind tuberculosis is synonymous with consumption of the lungs, but this is only one of its manifestations. Brain fever (tuberculosis of the brain) is a common and invariably fatal disease. The joint troubles known as “white swelling,” “hip disease,” and very many others are due to tuberculosis. The so-called “scrofulous” glands, which disfigure and undermine the health of so many of our children, are due to tuberculosis. The worst and most fatal form of diarrhœa is due to tuberculosis of the bowels. No organ in the body is exempt from the ravages of this disease. We look with righteous horror at the plague, or the various fevers which occasionally decimate our towns and villages, but these are as nothing when compared with the ravages of tuberculosis. Unlike the fevers which destroy life in a few days, tuberculosis usually takes months, often years, to kill its victims. Slowly, but surely, this terrible malady eats away the human organs till the unfortunate sufferers die of exhaustion, or from an intercurrent malady. To say that medical science can always cure tuberculosis would be very far from the truth, but it can and does rescue millions of sufferers from the disease. And it can, and in the future it will, do much to prevent the disease from gaining an entrance to the body. The disease is caused by a microbe, an infinitesimal atom of jelly, which cannot even move; but it can, and does, multiply by splitting in two, at an incredible rate. As regards the prevention of this scourge, the first question we must consider is, where does this dreadful organism come from? Suffice it for your question that the organism is frequently found in milk. True, it is only in the milk of tubercular animals that these organisms are found, but it is not always possible to tell whether a cow has tuberculosis. And so, notwithstanding every precaution, tubercular milk does get into your milk-jug and that can scarcely be prevented; but you can prevent the organisms from finding their way into you or your child’s body by the simple expedient of boiling the milk. If you boil milk it cannot give you tuberculosis. Now, we dare say you think that we might have said this at once, and not wasted half a column of valuable space in detailing the horrors of tuberculosis. Had we done this you would probably not have paid any attention to our warning. It is only by forcible illustration that we can impress the mind with the immense value of attention to trifling details. And the importance of this detail may be gauged when we aver that a law to enforce persons boiling their milk would probably save more lives than the invention of ships which could not possibly be injured by wind or weather, or of railway trains which could not collide.