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COLD AND TOXEMIA COVIn a textbook' on “Nervous and Mental Diseases by Charles S. Potts, M. D.. published 22 years ago, exposure to cold and wet is given as a cause of multiple sclerosis, internal pachymeningitis, locomotor ataxia primary lateral sclerosis (spastic paralysis), infantile paralysis (acute anterior poliomyelitis, progressive spinal muscular atrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, neuralgia, neuritis, idiopathic multiple neuritis, optic atrophy, facial paralysis, wryneck, intercostal neuralgia, sciatica, acute myelitis (inflammation of spinal cord), chronic myelitis, paralysis agitans (shaking palsy, Parkinson’s disease), Raynaud’s disease, erythromelalgia. and we’ll continue the list some other time — I’m tired of it now and I’m going over bowling . . .What I meant to say is that, thank goodness, the list of ailments ascribed to exposure to cold and wet is steadily' diminishing as our knowledge of pathology 'increases.That condition mentioned about the middle of the list (if the printer didn’t give up before he got that far), idiopathic multiple neuritis, is a humdinger. An idiopathic disease is one without extrinsic or apparent cause. As a matter of plain logic we might as well say that every disease mentioned is “idiopathic,” but I reckon the old timers hated to come right out and admit they didn’t know the cause of the trouble That’s how it happens that exposure to cold or wet is given as one of the causes of all these diseases of the nervous system in this 22-year-old medical book.Actually so far as our scientific knowledge goes, no ailment is caused by exposure to cold or wet, save only frostbite. There is no dangerEH A LOT OF IGNORANCEthat this statement will be controverted, for there is no experimental evidence to support the quaint notion that such exposure gives rise to disease.I am quite aware that exposure to cold or wet may be injurious to one who has, say, Raynaud’s disease, or prostatic hypertrophy, or chroni; nephritis, but that fact should not be confused with the cause of the malady.In his book “Nutrition and Disease Dr. Edward Mellanby says' “(1) Early cases of disseminated sclerosis (otherwise called multiple sclerosis), however severe, have greatly improved by proper dietetic treatment as sug- j gested above, and so far as can ! be seen at present, remain improved.(2) Old-standing cases may be slightly improved by this treatment, but in any case have not become worse—the morbid condition generally lias remained stationary.”The diet Mellanby refers to is one he describes as a high vitamin A diet — “it includes 1 to 2 pints of milk daily, 2 eggs, mammalian liver, green vegetables and carrots, and cod-liver oil-two teaspoon fuls twice daily.This world famous authority does not hold that disseminated sclerosis is caused by vitamin deficiency, but modestly suggests “that the whole problem is worth a larger and, more prolonged investigation from thus nutritional angle, for even if the treatment only prevents the ad vance of the disease and bring:; j about curative changes in early inflammatory lesions, it will be a great boon.”QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Newspaper Details
Canandaigua Daily Messenger
Canandaigua, New York, US
Tue, Mar 12, 1935
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Indiana H.
IN, USA 28 Jan 2019
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