Pago
by
THE CHINA BRIL, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1956.
Hypochondria
-THE FACTS AT LAST
For the first time a specimen housing estate is put under a detailed medical microscope
CHAPMAN PINCHER BRITAIN is fast becoming a nation of
compulsive drug-takers—men, women, and children who regularly swallow pills and potions not because they need them but because they have got so used to taking them that they fear their health will suffer without them.
In addition to the colossal quantities dispensed through the Health Service, modern families are buying even more medicine over chemists' and grocers' counters.
This pharmaceutical orgy is likely to get worse because hypochondriac parents are passing the habit of hitting the medicine bottle on to their
children.
These facts emerge from the first full-scale inquiry into what medicines people are taking and why they are taking them. The results were issued recently in a report published by the British Medical Association.
No prescriptions
Detailed information of the medicines consumed by 2,500 people selected at random on a modern housing estate near London were obtained by a team of doctors led by Dr Margot Jefferys, Dr J. F. Brotherston, and Dr Ann Cartwright.
People were asked about every recent illness and every visit to a doctor, hospital or chemist. They listed every medicine they had bought from eye lotion to vitamin pills.
How much they took...
Who may look LES 700
Out of every 100 grown ups who were not ill during a month...
29 took some form of self-prescribed medicine
KAMRA JAR STUD
LAKATNIS
MALE
EY BACHER
13
Out of every 100 children who were not ill during a month...
39 took medicine
3
9
prescribed by their parents
3
6
CATCHI
BOELSTELY SEMELMS
2
7
How they hit the medicine bottle.
admitted they had experienced no pain or any other symptom of illness.
Four out of every 10 adults and two out of every 10 children had taken some form of pain-relieyer. One child in every four had been given laxatives not to remedy any existing disorder but in the belief that the digestive system cannot function properly without them.
The types
The doctors found that in the month previous to the inquiry two out of every three people interviewed had swallowed some medicine bought without a doctor's "If would seem that the habit of prophylactic dosing prescription. Even among children under four years of is widespread, especially where children are concerned," age seven out of every 10 had taken medicine-more the report states. often prescribed by their parents than by their doctors.
What startled the investigators most was the finding that many people had taken medicine though they
The findings show that hypochondria is more pre valent among women than men, especially during the thirties.
AGE
પ્રજ્ઞામે ક
sample findings from the doctors' report. Chart by Michael Rand
Suspecting that perhaps the more poorly educated would be more likely to dose themselves and their children with self- prescribed drugs, the doctors compared their results with the pro- fessional status of the fathers concerned.
They found that it was the better educated parents who reached into the medicine chest most readily.
At first, the doctors thought that the people prescribing drugs 1 for theniselves might be helping to rèllève the strain on the Health Service. Instead they found that it was the people who haunt the doclóri surgery who also patronlay the chemist's counter.
Full-blown hypochondriacs doubly insure by taking the doc- tor's drugs and their own. The people can usually be detected- the home. It is a reliable symbol by one map observation: The presence of a clinical thermometer in worrier.
the self-medicating health- The inquiry fully confirmed the jibe that this is the Aspirin Age and explained why 4,000 million aspirin tablets get into British stomachs every year.
Aspirin was taken for arthritis, anaemia, bronchitis, neuritis, Influenza, insomnia, colds, catarrh, headaches, and rheumatism.
The doctors are disturbed by the widescreed self-me for serious allments such as stomach ulcers, arthritis, and
Some people had prescribed their own medicin symptoms. For ear troubles little more than half the used had been prescribed by doctors.
Many people, are not prepared to spend time at the docto and pay is, anyway when they can buy a drug they think wit JORN them at the chemist's, "This di € disquieting feature of the Hadith Service," the report states:
Higher still...
Is it fair to judge the British drug situation from this one fine-focus inquiry? I suspect Britain's drug-intaîté is even higher than indicated by this report.
The bouging estate was coounded almost exclusively by young couples. And the intake of drugs is known to be higher still among the elderly-London Express Service:
Could it be Roundworms?
Microscopic roundworm eggs are everywhere. In vegetables, fruit, water. Even in the best ordered families there is always the danger of infection. And
children are most liable to attack. They don't realise the dangers in uncooked foods and contaminated water.
Happily, there's a simple, proved remedy
'ANTEPAR
("ANTEPAR"
TRADE MARK
One dose of 'ANTEPAR get rid of roundworms in a day. Pleasant-tasting 'ANTEPAR should be taken at bedtime. Then roundworms are expelled the next day casily, and dacurally! "ANTEPAR" is always quick, sure, safe. It causes do pain of sickness. Not even with small children.
Make ANTIPAR" a routine family habit. Give everyone one dose every three months. And be sure your family are: always free from round worinal
'ANTEPAR' the one-dose, one-day roundworm remedy
Accept only original.
HUTCHISON & CO. LTD.
"NU"KONG
MACEU
200 BOY BOXERS
HELP
BRAIN TESTS
Five-year watch for mental defects
Two hundred London schoolboys are to take part in a medical experi- ment to find out if boxing affects brainpower. The boya-all over 11, pupils at central or suburban schools affiliated to the Amateur Boxing Association-have to report twice a year to a London mental hospital. -
There a team of psychologists
led by Dr. J. L. Blonstein, the ABA's medical officer, will put them through a series of intel- ligence and 'aptitude tests.
Results will be compared with non-boxers from similar age- groups.
Choice of job
The World of Science
*etei Farley
"been due to the victims hitting The mental ability of each the back of their heads on the boy will be watched until after
ring floor. he has taken a job or entered a dev university. The experiment 15 To combat this the London expected to last five years.
ABA has now approved rubber
Dr Blonstein told me: Wer felt floors,
want to find out if the sport
causes any mental defects in the
And it will be capable reaching more than the 27,003- mile-an-hour - escape velocity. seeded for such a long journey) Gentle curve
The Lical timing shot would be August, to allow
sh orbit which
boya or changes their Intel CLOSE TO MARS? the mix to curve gently logo
Egence in any way. We als want to me the kinds of job that young, boxers take whether they prefer manual
Draktom iga firm bellover
the planet orbit Docenter, Then társ will be
LONDON
only one am come
say you look any younger today.
Why do you ask?”