Guidelines for good health

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32542, 27 February 1971, Page 10

Guidelines for good health

Avoidable Death. By John Mansfield. Cassell. 161 pp. Index. The reader in search of light entertainment, and with the mistaken belief that this bock is a thriller will be disappointed. Yet its disclosures are as dramatic as any crime study, though the “criminal” in this case is also the unconscious victim of his crime. Dr Mansfield adds a sub-heading to his book, "Survival and Commonsense,” and with the aid of research statistics comes up with some startling figures on the risks taken by the average man and woman in possibly limiting their own term of existence. As might be expected cigarette smoking is regarded as public enemy number one mainly for its statistical links with death from coronary thrombosis and lung cancer. So much evidence has PERIODICALS Landfall 96. (Vol. 24 Nbr 4). Edited by Robin Duddlng. Caxton Press. 100 pp., tow plates. New Zealand poetry seems on the brink of a huge new period of expansion: some older poets are showing signs of unrest, and many younger writers are confidently developing a remarkable diversification of styles whereas just a decade ago it seemed normal for a young poet to concentrate on establishing a single distinctive technique. Moreover, a situation has now arisen in which painters are painting poems and poets are writing pictures. And, in the middle of all this, Oxford has brought out a new anthology which is about as cautious and conservative as one could imagine. Landfall 96 attempts an assessment of the situation: the Oxford collection is reviewed by both D. C. Walker and James Bertram, there are articles by David Anido and Gordon Collier about the work of younger poets, and the issue is introduced by 22 pages of “Poets and Poems for the Seventies.”

The total result is a penetrating and balanced examination of what is going on. Walker is an American and Anido a Canadian; each of them takes a viewpoint which is essentially alien and unsympathetic, and this is certainly to the advantage of their criticism. Walker’s review raises enormous questions of function and evaluation; reading them is a humbling experience, yet these are problems which must be faced, and he is to be congratulated on his courage in attempting something that could easily be misinterpreted and dismissed as iconoclasm. Anido’s survey of the last three issues of Arts Festival Yearbook valiantly takes up the conspectus where flie Oxford volume collapsed in despair, and Collier’s article on Manhire and Hotere ambitiously formulates a taxonomy of critical procedure to describe the Dunedin exhibition of abstract concretions.

Aumla 34. Edited by R. T. Sussex. Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association. 200 pp.

Sinologists are , unusually well catered for in this latest issue of Aumla, which begins With articles on Chinese fiction before the Republic, the novels of Meng Yao, and “China and the Northern Barbarians." Also in this issue are papers on fourteenth century French, Chretien de Troyes, Lope de Vega and Agustin Moreto, and the Katherine Mansfield legend in France. Much of this is of a restricted, specialist nature, and some articles do not even make allowance for the student of comparative literature. A remarkable exception, however, is J. D. Goodliffe’s “Merzliakov’s ‘Shade of Captain Cook’,” which describes a work by a minor poet of the early nineteenth century of particular interest to readers of Pacific history.

been presented in the press and other informative media on this subject that the immense stress laid upon it by the author seems, at times, a little superfluous. However, he has plenty to say about other, less obvious methods of hastening ones own demise—among ' them lack of exercise and obesity (both factors conducive to the greatest killer of the age coronary thrombosis), avoidable accidents while travelling and at home, methods of contraception, and alcohol. For the early detection of certain types of cancer he advocates the routine checks and mass screening now so readily available, and believes that the near future will see an increasing interest in preventive medicine. Though the book is a serious work, devoted to revealing the dangers to health implicit in rich diets, oversmoking and other customs of an affluent society, the author has a dry sense of humour which leavens the solid mass of facts. Some of his conclusions could no doubt be challenged by other members of his profession, but for the lay reader with an ambition for longevity the book contains some useful guidelines to a prudent concern for his bodily health.