View report page

in life whilst yet very young, rather than that at the age of sixteen he
should be faced with the enormous problem of going forth from the
sheltered seclusion of a Special School to find out—the hard way—what
is his niche in life.
Question:— I have read about a Special Unit for the Treatment
of Juvenile Rheumatism. Does this mean that children are
suffering more from rheumatism, or that more is being done for
those who do so suffer ?
Answer:—Personally I do not believe there is any more juvenile
rheumatism to-day than there has been in the past; contrariwise, I
believe it is on the decline.
What I can say is that I do not trust any figures which are published.
You see the plain, blunt fact is that if a child is a little feverish, and
if a child has growing pains, then you can "bet your bottom dollar" that
child is suffering from rheumatism. The attack may be of very short
duration—indeed—it may even be that the child is so little off colour
that he, or she, is not put to bed at all, nor even kept off school.
It will be seen that where we have a disease which can, on occasion,
give such slight manifestation it is impossible to believe that we can
collect accurate statistics, and we must, I think, rely on the experience
of men like myself who have been looking out for rheumatism for
considerably over a quarter of a century.
Question:— What is Athlete's Foot ?
Answer:— You have been out in the country and you have seen
mushrooms and toadstools and other fungi, some of which are the most
curious shapes and most gorgeous colours, but—believe it or not—
Athlete's Foot is the same sort of thing, save only that they do not grow
up like mushrooms.
So far as mushrooms are concerned the fungus is in the soil, and
here and there it grows into the toadstools (on which the fairies sit). In
the same way the skin on the feet—particularly between the toes—becomes
infested with fungus. This means it belongs to the same group of
troubles as ringworm of the head and ringworm of the body. It is, of
course, catching in the same way as ringworm of the head is catching,
and if you get a lot of people in their bare feet walking about, or if you
find people using one another's socks or shoes, then you have got circumstances
which are very favourable to the spreading of Athlete's Foot.
The best way of dealing with it is to prevent it; if only people who
had Athlete's Foot would keep it to themselves we soon should have no
trouble at all.
Meanwhile I am happy to say that the treatment of it is not too
difficult. There is an ointment which has been in use for this purpose
for many years, and it is still good, although other ointments are on the
Page 17