Economical Value of Medical

Handbooks

By R. F. Thompson, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.I.

A CELEBRATED medical man in Aus tralia, Philip E. Muskett, published in the year 1903 The Illustrated Australian Medical Guide in two volumes. The great urge for this work was that the only similar works obtainable in Australia had been written in England or America and were quite valueless to the Australian people.

Muskett’s volumes are still to be found all over Australia and in all sorts of homes. People in isolated homesteads, far from medical aid, find Muskett a reliable old friend of 33 years’ standing.

Dave of the outback, for example, is bitten by a poisonous snake and is kept alive by Sarah who has hastily verified that the bite is from a venomous reptile by observ ing only two punctures instead of several as left by the non-venomous variety. She seizes the whip that Dave is carrying and ties the lash above the bitten part, ignor ing the while the advice of an obstinate old swaggy who insists that Dave should be made as drunk as a lord. Muskett is emphatic that there is no sense in mak ing the patient intoxicated. Dave con tinues his fencing job that afternoon feel ing none the worse for the experience.

In the Solomon Islands, Muskett’s Aus tralian publication, like English and American works in Australia, has a lessened value. Typhoid does not exist in the Solomons. Poisonous snakes are very rare, but centipedes, scorpions, and many poisonous fish are found. Yaws, from which most of the native children suffer, are known by their framboesial appearance.

There are many tropical complaints such as “mango toe*’ and nasty abscess formations that need constant attention out on the lonely plantations, away from any medical help whatever. Nathaniel Crichlow, M. 8., Ch.B., Glasgow, who has been for a long time a Government Medi cal Officer in the Solomons, published in 1921 a small handbook entitled “A Brief Medical Guide for the Solomon Islands’’

wherein the important diseases such as Blackwater, Malaria, Dysentery and pul monary complaints are dealt with very fullv. Many deaths have been averted by the aid of this small Medical Guide of only 109 pages. Hundreds of labourers have annually been cured of sicknesses, thus ensuring the continued production of hundreds of tons of copra and other pro duce.

The Medical Guide is kept on every plantation in the Solomons, and is the inspiration of the planter in times when ill-health hovers at his door. These Medi cal Guides, therefore, have a great econo mic value apart from other things, but it is evident that locality governs their use fulness.