On a long car journey with your children, make sure that you stop frequently to let them stretch and run a little, or to have a drink or a snack. Children hate being cooped up for long periods of time.

Choose your roadside stops carefully, and keep an eye on your children, particularly if there is a lot of traffic around. Take games and toys along with you that are appropriate for children to play in the car. If your child suffers from motion sickness, it is best for him to avoid reading or writing in the car.

Going overseas

If you are travelling overseas with your child, speak to your doctor well before you leave about special immunisations. This varies according to the countries you are travelling to, and is updated constantly. Vaccinations are available against typhoid, cholera, hepatitis B, meningitis, yellow fever, tetanus and polio. Tablets are available against malaria, and gamma globulin injections as prevention against hepatitis A. Your doctor will be able to advise you which, if any, of these your children require oeiore travel, some capital cities also have travel centres where this information is available.

You may want to make up a special travel kit, to carry with you in case of illness. Your doctor can give you advice on what to put in it. If your child takes any medications, be sure to carry a sufficient quantity of them with you. Your doctor can also provide you with a letter giving a summary of your child’s health record.

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HUSBAND

Fewer than one person in four returns to “pre-heart attack” sexuality. Almost none of these persons have any physical or medical reason not to return to sexual activity, but fear, lack of knowledge, diminished self-concept, general depression, or physician neglect of this important area of their rehabilitation got in the way. There were seldom significant organic reasons to avoid sexual interaction, but poor education from their doctor and reluctance to communicate about sex with their doctor or spouse robbed them of the opportunity to return to intimacy.

My interviews suggest that depression, whether from lack of information, lack of self-esteem, or fear, is at the core of the problem. “Will I ever be able to work again, work like I used to?” asked one man. “I just can’t imagine being like I was before.” I have never talked with a patient who reported such concerns who did not also have sexual concerns, for sex cannot be separated from our concept of self, our work, and our sexual “workability.”

The lack of specific discussion of heart disease and its relationship to sex implies a negative message to the patient. “I thought because he didn’t say a word about it that he thought I’d be crazy to even think it, so I stopped thinking it. At least, I tried. Every time I had sex it was like I decided I would die for it if I had to.” This patient expresses the concern of most of the heart patients with whom I have counseled: forget the whole thing or risk your life.

When some information was given about sex and heart disease, it was usually wrong. Wait about six months for the heart muscle to heal, was a rule of thumb, followed by the now infamous “two flights of stairs” advice. If patients could walk up two flights of stairs without heart symptoms, they could have sex. Medicine apparently assumed that climbing stairs is the closest analogy to having sex. It makes one wonder how doctors have sex. The effect of such advice was to raise anxiety, as the patient waited for the weeks to pass to attempt the stair-climbing. Few health-care workers thought to study the effects of the anxiety caused by such delay and anticipation> the effects that such an emotional state could have on me healing heart.

Research data indicate that maximal heart rate during a typical workday is actually higher than that achieved during orgasmic contractions. Blood-pressure changes with sexual activity also are not at a risk level in the absence of other illness factors. Of course, each case is different, but unless the doctor can tell you why you should not have sex, then you would probably benefit from sex, not just survive it. I have never found that waiting for healing was helpful in any illness. Getting better is an active, not passive state, and diseases of the heart may be healed more easily by loving than waiting.

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Ellis thought that male sexuality was “predominantly open and aggressive,” while female sexual response was “elusive,” slower, and much more elaborate. While men responded to touch, the penis was the focus for them. Even the scrotum was seen as without much sensitivity.

Ellis saw the nongenital areas as sexually responsive in the female. He felt that the breasts were particularly sexually responsive. Women were viewed as sexual “all over their body,” and much more “total” in their sexual response, more mentally and emotionally involved. He wrote, “In a certain sense, their brains are in their wombs.” By this unfortunate phrase, he meant that women were not the asexual beings of Victorian doctrine, that they were in fact highly sexual. The misrepresentation of this view became “women are preoccupied with sex,” are more emotionally involved in it. Women came to be seen as sex objects, sexually driven by some innate procreative and unique feminine drive.

Ellis changed his views of marriage throughout his career. He continued to view it, however, as a natural state, “the most natural expression of an impulse which cannot, as a rule, be so adequately realized in full fruition under conditions involving a less prolonged period of mutual communion and liberty.” He added, “The needs of the emotional life. . . demand that such unions based on mutual attraction should be so far as possible permanent.”

He would later add that some form of erotic variety was necessary, even within marriage, but that such variety should be in the form of sensitive affairs, “liaisons” of love that protected, even enhanced marriage. Like most researchers, he felt that marriage could not compete with variety, his own theories paralleling the change from exclusivity to a search for variety characteristic of many marriages.

Ellis did not think much of traditional Western marriage. He felt that Western marriage deromanticized the marital relationship, making a contract out of a natural state of relating, changing the substantive joining of two people to a formal agreement between two partners. He repeated that marriage was “not a contract, but a fact.” As with all of the theorists of the first three perspectives, Ellis struggled with the conflict between the erotic and hedonistic on one hand and the romantic and intimate on the other.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Albert Moll, Edward Carpenter, Auguste Forel, Iwan Block, Magnus Hirsch-feld, and certainly Sigmund Freud were all influential in the period of sexual transition beginning in the 1890s with Ellis’s work. Masters and Johnson’s recent book On Sex and Human Loving traces many of these influences on what philosopher Paul Robinson calls this “modernization of sex.”

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Heat, friction or emotional upsets may be the trigger for recurrence in others. It is highly infectious. Women who become pregnant may have the infection cross the placenta to infect the foetus. Infections acquired late in the pregnancy may infect the child during its passage through the birth canal and so caesarean section may be indicated in some cases to prevent the child becoming infected.

Diagnosis is usually obvious from the clinical picture but scrapings from the ulcers may be examined under the microscope or virus cultures be obtained to make sure of the diagnosis.

A variety of local applications to the lesions have been used including painting them with a dye and then exposing the area to ultra-violet light. This has now been abandoned as it is thought to increase the risk of cancer in the area.

Chronic infection of the cervix or neck of the womb with the herpes virus is thought to be one of the causes of cancer of the cervix which is the second most common cancer in women.

But herpes may not be forever as many people eventually mount some sort of immune response and the recurrent flare-ups cease.

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Yet most are rather hazy about how their eyes function and why they need glasses.

Light enters through the cornea, or clear window, of the eye.

It passes through the watery fluid of the anterior chamber and enters the back section of the eye through the pupil, a hole in the iris or colored part of the eye.

The iris acts like the lens aperture of a camera, varying in size to admit different amounts of light depending on how bright it is.

The light rays then pass through the lens which focuses them on to the retina at the back of the eyeball.

This is a layer of sensitive nerve endings which when stimulated transmit the impulse through to the brain where it is interpreted as sight.

To test eyesight — or visual acuity — a Snellen’s chart is used.

This consists of letters which diminish in size from above downwards.

The top letter is of such a size that a person of normal sight should be able to see it at a distance of about 60 metres.

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Breast milk is a complete food in the first few months of life and the baby does not need any other.

There are a number of reasons why all mothers should be encouraged to breast feed their babies.

In the first few days after birth before the milk comes in, the secretion from the breast, colostrum, contains immunoglobulins. These give the baby a number of ready made antibodies to protect it against infection while its own immune system is still immature.

Because the transfer of the milk is from the breast straight into the baby’s mouth there is little opportunity for germs to contaminate the supply system as may easily happen with artificial feeding.

This is an important factor in the developing countries where women have been switching from traditional breast feeding to bottle feeding. The standard of hygiene is often poor with the result that gastro-enteritis becomes common and this may well be fatal.

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The endogenous pigments are important for iridology. To these endogenous pigments belong those of the haemoglobin group with the end-product haemosiderin (colour: red to brown), the melanin group (colour: brown to black), and lipofuscin, also referred to as the ‘wear and tear’ pigment (colour: light yellow to dark brown).

The melanin group of pigments have their origin in special dendron cells, melanocytes (also described as melanodendrocytes). These cells derive from the embryonic neural crest. The melanin originates in the melanocytes by means of complicated enzymatic processes. A first stage of melanin is the colourless amino-acid Tyrosine. This compound is transformed by the action of Tyrosinase through dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) into melanin.

Melanin formation is also subject to hormone control. The pituitary gland secretes a melanocytotrophic hormone (MTH, also called melanocyte-stimulating hormone: MSH), which has a stimulating effect, while the adrenal hormones from the cortex and medulla appear to check the pigmentation process. From these different influences affecting the formation of pigment, it can be accepted that disturbances may give rise to a wide variation of manifestations within the total organism.

Melanin tends to migrate within the body. Because of its poor solubility as such, melanin is taken up by the cells of the reticuloendothelial system, the melanophores, by a process of phagocytosis, and conveyed to wherever it supposedly serves some purpose. Melanin is found in the vicinity of inflammatory processes, and also with skin conditions accompanied by inflammation. Pigment migration also arises in the vicinity of tumors and within many tumorous conditions, e.g., melanosarcoma. One is also reminded of ulcerations of the lower leg, where melanin deposits occur over large areas.

It should also be mentioned here that melanin is found within the body as a normal constituent of the hair, skin and the posterior surface of the iris. It accumulates in the skin as a protection from the ultraviolet rays of the sun, where the melanin protects the skin from the carcinogenic effects of these rays.

If melanin deposits are found on the anterior surface of the iris, then there is a positive indication of the existence of serious metabolic disturbances. Indeed, according to the accompanying signs in the iris, one may speak of a pre-cancerous condition of the corresponding organs or systems which can ultimately lead to a cancerous state.

The iron-containing pigment: haemosiderin (haemofuscin) is a reddish colour to begin with, and may then change towards dark brown (the colour change of a piece of rusting iron!). On the destruction of large quantities of red blood corpuscles, this pigment becomes deposited within the tissues of the body. It can also appear in the iris following internal or concealed haemorrhage. In my opinion it is not a sign for haemorrhagic tendencies, but only the sign of a large destruction of red blood corpuscles in which the iron is deposited in the tissues.

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Home care: Have your child’s eyes examined regularly, and be aware of the signs that might suggest the child has a vision problem.

Precautions

-    A child s vision should be checked annually from the age of four or younger.

-     If your child holds books very close to his or her eyes when reading or cannot see the television screen from a distance, have the child’s eyes checked.

By age four or five, 5 to 10 percent of all children have a problem with vision. By the end of adolescence, the percentage has climbed to 30.

The usual vision problems that occur among children and adolescents are nearsightedness (myopia), lazy eye (amblopia ex anopsia), farsightedness (hyperopia), and astigmatism. Nearsightedness or the inability to see distant objects clearly, is hereditary. It is rarely present at birth but develops as the child grows. Lazy eye develops during the first six or seven years of life. Farsightedness (inability to see nearby objects clearly) and astigmatism (blurred vision at all distances) occur at an early age and don’t usually grow worse with time.

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