ALUMINIUM AND HEALTH.
Letter to the Editor,
British Medical Journal.
Sir, I have had the opportunity of observing several cases of “infantile eczema,” hitherto diagnosed as being of allergic nature, and a large number of patients suffering from acute and chronic nettlerash accompanied by severe gastro-intestinal disturbances. In the acute cases the signs and symptoms were of such unusual severity as immediately to suggest their being due to a highly potential irritant which in its action was closely similar to arsenic and belonged probably to the same group of poisons, although arsenic itself was not found.
It was subsequently proved that the causative factor in these cases was in fact a highly potential irritant present in aluminium utensils, since all the signs and symptoms disappeared within a short time after the discarding of these utensils and of other sources of metallic poisoning.
In support of my statement (Franco-Brit. Med. Rev., 1928) that skin affections are very often produced by metallic poisoning, and by aluminium in the first instance. Underhill and Peterman write that on feeding dogs for twelve weeks with aluminium a skin disease developed in one of the animals, which was covered with abscesses that became large bleeding sores.
“It became so sick that it would not attempt to eat or even move. It was given milk, a quart at a time, by stomach tube for a few days. Improvement started at once; by the end of the experiment it was eating all its food, the skin had healed, and new hair was growing”.
Such are the statements of two scientific investigators, among many whose conclusions point to the necessity, definitely urged by Schaeffer and collaborators (Bull. Hygiene Publique, 1928, XVI., 49), of prohibiting the use of aluminium.
THERE IS NO HOMOEOPATHIC DOCTOR IN IRELAND.
DEAR SIR, Having read some of your articles on homoeopathy it seems to me that I may venture to ask you to do a kindness to one who is unable to get the medical advice which is so much needed. There is no homoeopathic doctor that I can consult here, and I am unable to leave my aged mother who in 88. I hope you will be able to help me.
I am,
Very faithfully yours,
MISS. C. L. SULLIVAN.
6, Ennismore Villas, Cork.
“I OWE A GREAT DEBT TO HOMOEOPATHY”.
Dear Mr. Barker, I am sure your readers will be interested in my case. For many years I had been in very poor condition and had come to consider poor health as natural and inevitable. I had received the usual orthodox treatments with the usual lack of benefit.
Some months ago I heard of a London homoeopath, and I consulted him. Instead of examining all my organs, he enquired with kindly sympathy and great thoroughness into every aspect of my life. He then gave me a diet and some sugar pills and I have become a totally different woman. I have immensely improved in every direction. I owe a great debt to homoeopathy, and I hope the day will come when all our medical men will practice the wonderful new art of healing which has done me a world of good.