MEDICAL.
Cornflower.—Starch, being one of the chief foods of man, cannot be injurious to the blood. If taken in excess it has a tendency to make you fat. It is most undesirable to get into the habit of sucking alum, for this drug has an exceedingly injurious effect upon the stomach and bowels. Chalk will cause indigestion and constipation. This habit of taking chalk, starch, etc., is due to what is sometimes called depraved appetite, but it is most commonly merely a silly habit, easily broken by a little determination.
Anxious.—You certainly suffer from some trouble with your lungs and need further treatment. You had far better see a skilled physician and have your chest thoroughly overhauled. From your letter, we think that you would obtain great advantage from spending the winters abroad, if you can do so. But do nothing until your chest has been examined.
E. H.—That we do not write for London girls only is abundantly proved by this correspondence column. We have this morning answered letters from all of the five continents. In fact, very few of our medical correspondents are Londoners, which is not surprising, for medical advice is so easy to obtain in the great Capital. Most of our correspondents live in out-of-the-way places—very many in the Australian bush or North American prairies. Of course, the science of medicine is much the same all over the world, and the advice that we give to a person in London is usually applicable to everyone suffering from the same affection in Europe, Asia, Africa or America.
Bivalve.—The question of the causation of typhoid fever by oysters created a great sensation last autumn, and it will doubtless do so again this year. Typhoid is infinitely more common in autumn than at any other season. It is caused by a definite well-known microbe, and it never occurs without the presence of this organism. The question of oysters conveying typhoid, therefore, depends upon the answer to the query, "Can the bacillus of typhoid live in the oyster?" It appears to be an undoubted fact that the living microbe can exist in the living oyster. Some men tried to prove that the organisms only occurred in oysters that were bad; but this was proved to be incorrect. Having decided that oysters can harbour the bacillus, the next question is—"How does the oyster obtain this microbe?" The answer to this is easy. The bacilli can only come from a patient with the disease, and so the oysters must obtain the poison from sewage. As far as we know oysters which are unable to feed on sewage matter cannot possibly obtain the typhoid poison. By no means everybody who swallows typhoid bacilli gets the fever. Typhoid is a distinctly infectious disease, but is rarely, if ever, caught from person to person as scarlet fever and small-pox are. The disease invariably results from taking food contaminated with sewage. Water is the chief vehicle by which the disease is spread, and therefore during epidemics of typhoid all water that is intended for drinking purposes should be boiled. Milk, watercress, oysters, salads, etc., also convey the disease. Milk is a common method of spreading typhoid, either by the milk being diluted with water, or else the cans having been carelessly washed out. Pure milk, absolutely free from water, cannot convey typhoid. Typhoid fever rarely attacks the same individual twice.
Effie.—You can do nothing to alter the colour of your eye. It is not at all uncommon for the eyes to be of different colours, but nothing can be done to cure it.
C. A. E. F.—That you have had gastric ulcer is of course unquestionable, but from what you say you have apparently been well treated. Gastric ulcer is a dangerous disease, and is very liable to recur unless stringent precautions are taken. If, however, patients with gastric ulcer are very careful, the disease gets less and less and usually ends in complete cure; but careful diet is always essential. As you know, the treatment is practically the same as that for severe dyspepsia. As regards your diet, we should not advise much alteration. You must not take oats in any form, for they are indigestible. We would suggest milk instead of cocoa, for notwithstanding all that has been said about cocoa, we have considerable reason for suspecting that it is anything but easy of digestion. When you have pain, you would do well to eat nothing but bread and milk for a day or two, and you should remain in bed during that time. As you get better you might take a little chicken or hashed mutton. It is extremely probable that you will soon get well enough to do some work. You should be careful to be near a doctor to whom you can send immediately that any untoward symptoms become manifest.
"A West Country Inquirer" asks us to explain the following circumstance—"I poured some permanganate of potash solution through the charcoal of my filter—as it were, washing out the filter with it—and the solution retained its bright proper colour. Must not this prove that my filter—a glass one with charcoal for the water to pass through—must be quite free from germs?" We will tell her that it by no means follows that her filter is free from germs. It is true that organisms (or rather their products) do destroy the colour of permanganate of potash, but they can only do so to a certain extent. She says that she used the solution to "wash out the filter." Probably she used some pints. It would require a vast host of microbes to destroy the colour of this quantity of solution. Her filter is, we take it, one with a carbon block, and usually in this kind of filter at least ninety per cent. of the water flows through holes in the carbon and corks, very little of it indeed going through the mass of carbon. Animal charcoal of itself will often decolourise potassium permanganate. If this correspondent wishes to test her filter more thoroughly, let her take out the carbon block and place it in a clean jug full of water, to which one or two drops of the permanganate solution has been added so as to make it a very, very pale pink. Having left it an hour or so, let her place a sheet of white paper behind the jug and see if the solution round the carbon block is paler in tint than the rest of the fluid. Even if this test is negative it will not prove that the carbon block is free from germs; nothing but a bacteriological investigation could prove the block to be sterile.