OILING THE WORKS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18100, 16 June 1924, Page 14

OILING THE WORKS.

HOW TO KEEP WELL.

Our food is necessarily "unnatural, in large degree, and ~no reasonable person" would suggest a return to an '/absolutely .'crude ' and pnnutivo, diet. TIIO gain-, if W did so, would doubtless \>e far, outweighed by the. loss. ■ ■ The ' most. conspicuousdifference.. between primitive' "diet and our own is the lack, in ours, of what .we are tow learning to call "roughage-—non-nutrittous ballast -or. : . ."^1 Two. great disadviantages fpildjv- trom tile' lack' of roughage,' 1 n the' .diet «r •the healtliy.- Tlie first is that, they tend to' eat too much of their cohcentrated diet" in order to.obtairi an "able sfcnso; of being' well-filled. -A l®ss diet them that without excess of food. . .The ~ second .is . that we perpetually tend to be constipated on our modern diet. The oviderioe aMumulatea to th? effect that this constipation is the curee of ' civilisation,' and' qafi -the • most 'fpiy midable' consequences} local and general. It necessarily involves a perper tual intoxication of the blood with offensive products which may injure every organ and tissue. Its local consequences very commonly include fatal cancer of the bowel, and one of the greatest of living authorities, Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, believes, and, is gaining more adherents to his belief, that tne constipation s which characterises civilised man is chiefly responsible for the development of Cancer, even in other parts of thfe bodyvtliat_ disease being eminently <v disease of civilisation and practically unknown amongst primitive people. The first steps against chronic constipation are to reform the diet to'take suitable exercise: the worst is to tako castor oil and drugs of that type. - To ■find and use the best , kind of roughage in the diet is quite a task: I do not now discuss it. but formally assert that, in any rational scheme of thought, it must come first.- Tlie invention of the 'best exorcises—all of- the- type {tailed, "body^behd'ihg"—is' also' a special suTjiect of difficulty ; and to persuade people not' only. to. ,l»egin them.' but to keep them >up ; , practically involves a compieto - reconstruction of human nature. ■ '' only, next,..,in o^der.comes .lubrication.- The use of.-aperients^'is to be condemned-. No aperient • exists which- is-suitable for continual use. 'They have serious' disadvantages. latent medicines which depend upon them should be shunned. A lubricant is in. a wholly, different category. It has drug action, does nothing ti> Chp uelicat© wall of the'bowel,''is,not .absoroefl',' but acts' wholly' solely as a lubncant. Nothing could be simpler, and safer, nothing more useful. The introduction of pure medicinal paraffin for this purpose mankind'owes to Sir William Arbuthnot Lane. It is an immense boon. Many firms prepare such paraffin, jgome'mix it with special foods or digestive agents. My concern here is solely to commend the paraffin as a . lubricant. The reader knows that I spend little space here in praising drugs. There- are a few .valuable drugs, but this is not a drug. It is a mechanical lubricant only. From one of .many conversation's with its introducer, I recall his statement that he has never known cancer to develop in any of the many persons they must number thousands—who have regularly taken paraffin to his knowledge during the past twenty years. The sole responsibility i s mine for giving publicity to this remarkable statement which I do. in the public, interest. In my view it is momentous, and should form tho subject of thorough statistical enquiry. Such enquiry,_ for which I a.m partly responsible, is now being undertaken in San Francisco.—Dr. C. W. Saleeby, in the London "Daily News."