MEDICAL NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 29, 4 February 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

MEDICAL NOTES.

IS DISEASE UNNATURAL?

'I'HH ELIZABETHAN MEN.

FOOD AND STRENGTH.

(By PERITUS.)

Dr. A. Lane, the president of the New Health Society, haa shaken himself free of the shackles of the British Medical Council and put himself among the unqualified and unregistered, in order to spread his gospel that old age and death are natural but disease is unnatural. There is, I think, a doubt about the latter. Animals and insects all have parasites, and parasites bring disease. Apart from this, animals, both wild and domestic, do not invariably die from old age or accident or violence. Hunters, fishermen and naturalists all tell us of their capture of creatures diseased. I have been reading a diary written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from this it appears that as a nation we eat too little to be strong and healthy. Young ladies attached to Elizabeth's Court were allowed gallons of beer and many pounds of bread daily, and the average meals of both men and women were enormous. The only underfed persons seem to have been the very poor and the scriveners, vho are represented to-day by the tliouands of men in offices. The "dainty naid," of Sir Walter Raleigh's day, who Irank her two gallons of beer a day, ve can imagine as a sturdy wench of sleven or twelve stone, not very careful n her language, nor refined in manner )r dress. Drake and his merry men vere fit mates for such women. We ire now 'the most inventive nation in ;he world, and seem to have gained this position by little eating and big thinkng, and the sacrifice of robustness. French, Italian and German people (in the mass) all eat more heartily than ive do; and Americans are, on the whole, setter fed. It is known that stomach - ind bowel work more efficiently when provided with food (not too delicate in 81 texture) in bulk, and that refined, and " sophisticated foods are lacking in vita- 1 mins. Beef and beer, venison and sack, ?: stone-milled flour, and careless habits, made Englishmen the rulers of ever-ex- . tending realms; and now, tea and coffee, „ cocktails and snippets of devitalised food have so weakened them that Wells imagines they will one day be creatures of brain only, controlling machine-made n bodies. Dr. Lane's "preventive medicine" a means yet 'greater care in feeding, defi- e nitely arranged exercises, and attempted e disregard of disease. Rough and reckless preferably should be our lives for the next two or three hundred years, to breed again the Tubal Cains, the crafts- 2 men, the warriors, the seamen and the t weight-carrying women. Education and a refinement, machinery and many invent tions to save us from the exercise we r need, and the growing fondness for re- d fined and over-cooked foods, and pungent s stimulants' have brought us down to a.n overwhelming demand for patent c medicines, arid to diseases such as 1 tuberculosis and cancer which attack 1 the units of an effete and decadent £ people. t There, is an instinct in our I people which has prompted them-of late- i to harden themselves by athletics, <3 sport and "hiking," but mechanical <■ means of transport are still further. 1 weakening the race, and any running or * walking will soon be classed as "sport," 1 and sitting down the normal occupation 6 of any man or woman not a slave. The - physical strength of the army was not f a deciding factor in the Great War. i Intelligence, resilience, wit and * machinery enabled a people only 43 per ' cent physically fit for active life in all 1 weathers to wear down a physically 1 stronger race. ' Most of the fathers since the war * have been in class C physically, and the. , children of these are expected to put the world in good order for the future. To do this their first fight will be with disease, which Sir A. Lane says is un- j natural. The chief controlling element , is nourishing food, and plenty of it; air, ( sunlight, exercise, and a sufficiency of ] rest, follow. The cry of "return to the 1 land" should include a return to simple j food, and the old proved methods of its ] preparation. Brewing, milling and cook- , ing methods have all altered for the ; worse, and cleanliness and purity have ( gone on into over-refinement and adulteration. ,A country such as ours should J be self-supporting, as - England was in Elizabeth's day, when not very much beyond a few luxuries were carried from , overseas. Wines, sauces, gloves, lace, ' spirits, silk, etc., cost much money, so : did not reach the mass of the people. There -were deaths from over-eating, and over-drinking, from climatic diseases, and those due to non-sanitation, and many people died from violence, in sport, and from accident, but the Englishman was mostly a big boisterous boy as much respected for his strength as for his readiness to compete in games, or fighting to the death, and his disregard of danger. So many of his more manly qualities have been lost that it is not his mentality we must doubt to-day, but his physical characteristics, which made him the man h» once was. Our sailors tend i machines, as do operatives and farmers, and old stories of the sea read, now, like fairy tales of an imaginary people. Look around at any great gathering of our men and women, and note how many there are you would select for any enterprise calling for strength, courage, and endurance unassisted by machinery. How many of our men laugh Ho! Ho! Ho! robustly? ' A few laugh Ha! Ha! Ha! but most of them He! He! He!—a feeble cackle for a man. "Ho!" is beef and beer; "Ha!" is ham and eggs; "He!" is tea and toast; this feeding makes all the difference. In forty years I have noticed, too, a variation of the handshaker. The warm, firm, friendly clasp is now rare. One meets a flabby touch, a fishy contact, or a half-liearted grasp of formal kind and better omitted altogether. Of course, we have our athletic young men, but they are not so marked by modesty that you judge them to be ordinary. They know they are exceptional, and these little fellows (from Elizabethan standpoints) are proud of being "nearmen," men above the ruck. Well, there are some beautiful baby boys about. One hopes that mothers will harden them, with brown crusts, tough meats, nuts, and cold water (inside and out), and bring them up to stand erect and alert for every emergency. Compare the gallant of Elizabeth who carried away his girl on the saddle before liim, lifting her up to him without dismounting, with the sneaky, pale-face who smuggles his inamorata in a motor car to the side of a dark road and puts out the lights, and has to carry a flask of spirits to the dance hall sometimes before he can get up courage to do this. If I were a girl and my "boy" could not carry me kicking up a flight of stairs, I would say, "Next, please."