SOME AMERICAN IDEAS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 15 October 1914, Page 3

SOME AMERICAN IDEAS.

The American papers find a specific for every month. There is no opology for past errors, no pity for the eager multitudes who Snd only ' disappointment whore they were .promised* life, no guarded introduction of the fresh remedy. The new -curs- is always the true cure. And to-day's true cure in America is garlic. Just garlic! Garlic juice i.olds the remedy, if one cpuM but believe these persuasive Americans. The credit i'or the discovery is -given to an Irish phy-! sician, but he "is by no means the only doctor who is of the impression that he has found garlia the best remedy for the 'great white plag ie.' In New York, at the Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwell's Island, the physicians . . .! have been experimenting with the treatment for two years " In a report issued by one of the staff it is stated that the drug "would seem equally efficacious no matter what part of the body is affected—whether skin, bones, glands, lungs, or special parts. Dosage used internally, one drachm of the expressed juice or two drops of the essential oil three times a day; externally, poultices or crushed bulbs, one part with'three parts of lard, or unguentum garlic (50 per cent, in vaseline) applied daily." GARLIC "CURE." One writer in tli3 World Magazine, ■ New York, states that tuberculosis is xaU-e in, Italy, where the use of garlic is universal; whereas l'the leading Italian physicans in New Yoi'k say it i,s alarmingly prevalent among the children of Italians in America —children who do not; e3t garlic, largely because their schoolfellows and other associates ridicule them for smelling iof it." Without disputing about the facts, one might (writes I)r Robert Watson) reasonably question whether the key ■ to the contrast.is garlia. It is equally possible that differences in the life led and the influence of great cities,, and of the congested areas of these cities, "may provide causes for the spread of tubereleV Bat your American is nothing if not <in utter enthusiast. At least. as far back as -.a quarter, of a century ago, gavJc- was one of the remedies in the United States Pharmacopoeia, admitted there for its virtues in various bronchial affections,, kidney troubles, and in the eradication of roundworms. So the Yankees. have long been familiar with its \ise,. and ought surejy to have settled conclusively the question of its value as a medicine in consumption. Other countries have, and they have, too; but the mood of the uoment is to give the thing another chance, and, America and the Americans being what they are, garlic will lose no fraction of its opportunity 'for the want of brisk booming. ' Roman soldiers, ages ago, used to eat garlic to make them fitter for- the field. In our own country, at a later date, they fed fighting cocks on it. But we have now relegated garlic to a subsidiary place among 'tne herbs, just as we have '.'eased to believe that the mullein plant (Verbascum thapsus) and red root (Lacnanthcs tinctoria) are specifics for consumption. .

VALUE OF ESSENTIAL • OILS. To say so much is not to argue that garlic has no value in thß treatment of consuiiption. being the euro we seek, it may comfort and help the sufferer in several ways. Oil of garlic takes its. place, along "\vrth the oils of cinnamon; of turpentine,- of pin, of eucalyptus, and of cloves; and the iallyl suphide which oil of garlic contains may heighten its antiseptic qualities in an additional manner. The use of these oils is often attended by reduction in the amount of cough •, the spit at first rendered freer and more ' readily expectorated, may ultimately diminish under their eontiirued administration ; and it has even happened x that a casq threatening to run a. rapid and fatal course.on account of the presence of other microbes besides the tubercle bacillus in the damaged lung tissue has, by the inclusion of one or other of-these essential, oila in treatment, gradually altered in char-

acter —the sputum becoming less offensive and losing the other germs— the severity of the symtoms abating— even the number of tubercle bacilli showing a reduction. Thus one must not condemn these .drugs. But we protest that their reputation is not promoted- by making claims in excess of what may reasonably be attributed to their use. >:'•■■ DIET AND DIGESTION.' ■ All-fours exercise after meals does not recommend itself to the avei-age Britisher, whoso sense of the ridicu- , lous prevents him . from adopting ancestral antics; but Americans have got tho length of playing this game with variations. Dr. William Brady, writing about "eating for efficiency" for our trans-Atlantic cousins, advises the man whom a quarter-section of pie threatens with unhappiness to "retire to the privacy of his room, where, divested of all restraining garments, he may do a boa-con sitriefcor glide flat on his stomach. Fifteen minutes a day devoted to this simple pastime prevents postprandial remorse. One of the most potent causes of "indigestion . . . . is a kink, or, as the doctors say, 'ptosis'—that is, a dropping of organs due to our upright posture. The logical relief .. . . is resumption i of the horizontal position of our remote ancestors, or, better still, turning somersaults, or standing on our heads, if we are equal to the exertion. For timid sufferers a half-hour's rest in a prone position with chest low and hips elevated is a first-rate substitute.'* ! Herbert Spencer used to plead that" it was wrong: to. refuse youngsters sugar when they wanted it," and Dr Brady would give them it. brown. "Brown sugar' contains more than two hundred' times as' much mineral' matter as does white sugar.. .If'little- ones like it let them have it spread on their wholewheat Bread a: qjiarter of an inch thick. Physicians in the South find that the , piccaninnies- \v&£ fat and strong when the pane is ripe, and they declare that ; there is no evidence of indigestion or worms from the sugarcane feasfc."