Wet the hair with conditioner and comb through the hair right down to the roots, removing live insects and as many eggs as possible. If you do this every three days for three weeks, you will prevent any new eggs being laid. If your children come into contact with other children, there is always the risk that they will become reinfected If this happens, you need to start again. With five young girls, you have your work cut out.Readers writeDB from Bristol lowered his cholesterol without doing anything different:”I would advise your healthy correspondents with high cholesterol levels to take the test again, this time avoiding eating up to 14 hours before the test. I did and my cholesterol level fell significantly.”A range of treatments for verrucas, from MO of Cheshire:”I had a verruca for around 10 years, which kept coming back, despite a variety of treatments over six years.”I swim regularly and am sure that was where I picked it up, whatever you say. Eventually, I treated the verruca successfully using a combination of banana skin plasters (taped to the foot day and night), calendula tincture and Wartner cryo treatment (used far more frequently than instructed). The key to beating them is constant treatment.”Please send your questions and suggestions to A Question of Health, ‘The Independent’, Independent House, 191 Marsh Wall, London E14 9RS; fax 020-7005 2182 or e-mail to health independent.co.uk.

Dr Kavalier regrets that he is unable to respond personally to questions. The achievements of medical science in the past 150 years have transformed our world. It is almost impossible to imagine a time when there were no vaccines against polio and diphtheria, no antibiotics and no anaesthetics, and where open heart surgery, transplants and test-tube babies were the stuff of science fiction. But which is the greatest medical breakthrough? The British Medical Journal, the house journal for Britain’s doctors read by more than 100,000 in the UK and thousands more around the world, is trying to find out, asking its readers to nominate the greatest breakthrough since the journal was launched in 1840.
The BMJ has been inundated with nominations.

Announcing the survey in the magazine, Trevor Jackson, a senior editor, wrote: “Trying to answer such questions might seem the stuff of undergraduate essays or medical dinner parties – good fun, but ultimately a trivial pursuit. And yet, in seeking to isolate one breakthrough, we remind ourselves of the interdependence of all these breakthroughs and the importance of all our medical histories. In other words, the process can tell us more than the outcome.”Nominations for the BMJ’s survey are now closed, and the 15 most popular breakthroughs are to be featured in the journal over coming months before going to a vote. The results will be published in January.The Independent has drawn up its own list of the 10 greatest breakthroughs, based on the BMJ nominations. “Breakthrough” is perhaps an overused word in modern parlance but when applied to these discoveries it is, for once, justified. The contraceptive pill Inextricably linked with the 1960s, the decade in which it came into widespread use, the Pill revolutionised social and sexual attitudes. It gave women unprecedented control over their fertility; it required no special preparation; and it did not interfere with spontaneity or sensation.

For the first time sex became an act of love or of pleasure rather than of procreation, and women could enjoy sex on an equal footing with men.Today, three million women in the UK use the Pill. But not all societies were equally impressed; in Japan, fears that the Pill would reduce use of the condom and lead to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases prevented it being approved for nearly 40 years It was finally licensed in Japan in 1999. Oral rehydration therapy Which medicine has saved more lives than any other and can be made by anyone in their kitchen, back bedroom, shantytown hut or dwelling built of sticks – as long as they have access to clean water? The answer is: eight teaspoons of sugar, half a teaspoon of salt and one litre of water Mix. Drink.The discovery that sodium (salt) increases the absorption of water and glucose from the digestive tract has saved the lives of millions of children suffering from dehydration caused by diarrhoea, the world’s biggest killer of children. It requires no specialised equipment; uses ingredients that are ubiquitous and have a long shelf-life; has few side effects; and can be made up in any quantity – the perfect medicine Aspirin It is one of the most effective pain relievers.