OCR Text |
Show Protection To the Body During the flu epidemic a consulting consult-ing physician examinating the chart of a young medical officer, sick with pneumonia (following the flu) shook his head as he pointed to the number num-ber of white corpuscles (the disease fighters) present in the blood. As the patient was very ill it was to be expected that the number of these white corpuscles would greatly increase in-crease from the normal number of 6,000 to 8,000 per cubic millimeter to perhaps 20,000 or 30,000, whereas there was only about 7,000. The explanation of the consultant's consul-tant's feeling that there was no hope is that while a rise to 30,000 or 40,000 would show that the illness was very serious, it would show also that the resisting ability of the body was very great in being able to provide this large number of white corpuscles. Similarly, when there is rapid but strong pulse, increased blood pressure, pres-sure, and a rise in temperature, it is direct evidence that there is infection in-fection or other trouble in the body, but just as direct evidence that the body is putting up a fight against the infection or other trouble. How Body Fights Disease. Thus Dr. F. M. Pottenger in Endocrinology En-docrinology (science of the ductless glands thyroid, pituitary, and others) oth-ers) states: "It would seem to me that the conception or idea that the combination of symptoms pain, increased in-creased heart rate, increased blood pressure, increased number of white blood corpuscles, rise in body temperature tem-perature which we call disease represents really the condition which the body must assume in order or-der to protect itself against the disease elements which are causing trouble in the body, is most reasonable. reason-able. With this idea that the symptoms symp-toms really show that the body is fighting the disease we can recognize recog-nize inflammation and other reactions re-actions in the body to toxic or poison products as really a 'protective' 'pro-tective' process." You can readily understand then why your physician is more concerned con-cerned about the strength of the heart and the general condition of the body than he is about the temperature tem-perature being high or the blood pressure increased. (Hi'lcascd by WYsu-rn Newspaper Union.) |