As I Hear... The Poisoners

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31730, 13 July 1968, Page 17

As I Hear... The Poisoners

rßv J.H.t.S.) When, I wonder, do you think the dental experts began to warn us about the causal link between an excessive use of refined sugar in various forms and tooth decay? I asked my nearest consultant, who said he thought perhaps 50 to 60 years ago: a guess very close to my own. My reason for asking the question is that reading T. L. Peacock’s "Melincourt,” I found not only Mr Forrester’s remarkable proleptic appeal for C.0.R.5.0., which I recently quoted, but his denunciation of sugar. “It is physically pernicious, as its destruction of the teeth and its effects on the health of children much pampered with sweetmeats sufficiently demonstrate.” “Melincourt” was published In 1818. * * * Peacock’s views about sugar were largely directed by his conviction that it was all very well for English reformers to abolish slavery in their own realm but not very well at all to connive in it by importing West Indian sugar, which was the product of West Indian slave-owners and of their slaves—or, if he had driven the point, to batten on profits earned by English partners in West Indian slaverun sugar plantations. Peacock was a queer boy. He had himself many liberal, reformist ideas, which ground very happily against others, antireformist. Nobody ever drew more delight from mocking reformers or, generally, what he called “the march of mind,” or gave more delight by doing so. Out of the rub of ideas in the head of this odd character emerged two of the minor English masterpieces, by the way: his own "Four Ages of Poetry,” and his friend Shelley’s "Defence of Poetry," a reply. Peacock’s comical portrait of Shelley in the character of Scythrop seems not to have disturbed their friendship by the lifting of a hair. * * * The official chronology of medical advances is sometimes puzzling. Jenner, in all the schoolbooks, » given

the credit for defeating smallpox by inoculation. Regrettably, I have taken no note of the references; but the fact is that I have come on the record of preventive treatment by inoculation at dates long before Jenner. I guess that Jenner systematised a treatment which, before him, had been rough and ready, hit or miss. But his forerunners deserved a nod and a word. Again, James Cook is generally credited in the schoolbooks with having defeated scurvy by giving his sailors (“crewmen” in the prevailing jargor the juice of fresh limes, fresh vegtables, and fresh meat whenever he could get them. In fact he had been forestalled by Anson’s surgeon, whose name I forget and whose credit has been forgotten too. ♦ ♦ ♦

It interested me to note, in "The Press” recently, a discussion of the quality of the tea import from Ceylon which ended in the chairman of the New Zealand Tea Council promising to ask the Ceylon Government for a “factual and precise” report. While I wait for that report I may, without prejudice, interject a few trifles of personal evidence. First, years ago, a friend of my childhood and youth set up as a China tea merchant, and I bought from her many packets of China tea, of which I recall the name of only one, but especially the flavour of another, which was faintly tarry. These teas were all delicious, fragrant, reviving; the sniff of the steam off a cup was itself a tonic. I liked to see, as I sometimes did, the mats in which her tea was delivered. All this tea was economical; a pinch or two was enough for a small pot. Second, I came to know Earl Grey tea, mixed by London’s great firm of Twinings originally for Grey of the Reform Bill: exquisite, and owing something to the few leaves of orange flower introduced. A pinch was enough for a small pot It was to be drunk at pale straw colour, not I darker; and half a pound I would last forever. I used to have Selfridges post it to me.

But, under regulations and restrictions, in our regime of an ever-rising standard of living, I had to do without it until a touring friend brought me back a pound tin, of which after giving away some samples, I still, after years, have a remainder sufficient for some time. And the quality, in a tight-lid tin, has not gone off. Third, when India exhibited in a New Zealand industries show two or three years ago, I was given a small tin of Darjeeling tea, which was delicious. Fourth, I once knew a young lady who married a Ceylon tea-planter. When she returned to us, she brought some packets of Ceylon tea and distributed them among her friends. I can only record that my wife and I liked the tea from our packet much more than any we had been drinking under New Zealand brands. Fifth, I also knew a young man who was sent to Ceylon by the wholesaling firm that employed him; and he confided to me that we were not importing the best grades of Ceylon tea. And sixth, neither Earl Grey nor any of the China teas I bought from my old friend nor any of the other Twinings brands I was for a while free to buy (and now can buy again) left a stain on the cup, as did New Zealand brands, such as I used. Such are the facts within my imperfect knowledge; but I do not for a moment forget that tastes differ. What I like is not what my many neighbours like. Bless them; and I have no doubt they will get what they have been trained to like and want * * * I think it is not mere chance that has filled a great deal of space in “The Press” recently with news articles about pollution—pollution of the air and of water especially, Christchurch haring particular reason to be interested. Most or many of us have been increasingly uneasy over the progressive poisoning of air and water and land, by industrial wastes, by pesticides, and so forth; and the uneasiness has no doubt been spread and deep-

ened by the reports of the military use of destructive instruments in Vietnam such as shrivel vast areas of forest. Public opinion is stirred by news; news is also stirred by public opinion. Perhaps it was Rachel Carson who did most, as an individual, to awaken and alarm public opinion by her book, a few years ago, in which she surveyed the effect on vegetation and on animal, aquatic, bird, and insect life of poisons distributed deliberately or heedlessly by you and me through our industrial and scientific agents. A sequel to her boric was a horrifying survey, in the “New Yorker," of the pollution of the Hudson for many miles upstream; another, no less horrifying, of the pollution of New York’s atmosphere. Lethal pollution. Governor Rockefeller and Mayor Lindsay were both horrified. .... But, so far as I make out, the lethal pollution continues. It is easier to find thousands of millions of dollars to blast Viet Cong dumps and hide-outs and villages and forests than fewer millions to purify American waters and American air. I adduce the worst examples lately reported of a deadly mischief that extends far beyond New York and the United States; that extends to what Sir Sidney Holland used to call “this fair land of ours.” Fair enough. Fair enough for how long? I think I have quoted here, before, Ralph Hodgson’s lines of dark prophecy, 60-years-old: I saw in vision The worm in the wheat, And in the shops nothing For people to eat: Nothing for sale in Stupidity Street

National Shipping.—The Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Company of Master Mariners will debate the suggestion of a national shipping line at its next meeting. The chairman for the debate will be the warden of the branch (Captain R. D. H. Wallace), a Mid-Canterbury farmer, who was formerly a master in the service of the Union Steam Ship Company, Ltd.