Goldfields Area, N.G.
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
Dr. Von de Boch’s Work In Goldfields Area, N.G.
From a Special Correspondent.
WAU, September 3. jDEMARKABLE changes have taken Place in the health of the goldfields community in the last six to nine months.
Dr. Von de Boch has worked miracles.
Apart from being a noted authority on materia medica, he has done a great deal of research work on tropical hygiene, and his knowledge of Islands diseases has been the means of saving many lives here.
Until his arrival, the dreaded Japanese River fever had taken toll of.many lives as, in its initial stages, it closely re sembles typhoid and has, too, been diag nosed as malignant malaria. Recently two men from the Watut district were sent into the European hospital at Wau suffering from what had been diagnosed as typhoid. But Dr. Von de Boch’s trained eye saw the dreaded bush “mok kers,” or ticks, covering the men’s legs, and, making a blood test, discovered they were both suffering from Japanese River fever.
In the treatment of the mysterious periodic dysentery outbreaks at Edie Creek the doctor has worked wonders.
Time was when this area had the second highest death rate in the world; to-day all that is changed, and for over nine months now Edie Creek has never been quarantined, as in the old days before Dr. Von de Boch’s advent.