SUNSHINE AND AIR

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 51, 7 September 1928, Page 13

SUNSHINE AND AIR

A HEALTHIER NATION

NO MAGIC IN" DRUGS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 24th July. Somo 1400 delegates, representing most of the European countries, the Dominions, and the United States, have boon attending the annual congress of the Royal Sanitary Institute, at Plymouth. In delivering the inaugural address, Viscount Astor declared: "To-day fewer lives are lost by plagues, including smallpox, in a year, than are lost through accident on a successful bank holiday." This wonderful improvement in public health, he declared, had been achieved by making more available for everyone sunlight, fresh air, wholesome food and pure water, rather than by the use of drugs. "The 'expert 1 has changed his .mode of treat- I ment," he continued. "In the dark ages we called in the witch doctor and the medicine man with their incantations and secret concoctions, which must have been just as effective as the love philtres of the alchemist and the Contents of the witches' cauldrons. Gone are such magical cures, just as surely as is the practice of universal bleeding, whether by the opening of arteries or the use of sucking leeches. "More and more is the use of drugs being restricted and limited in nuinhcr and in their, application. Leading physicians tell us that they do not understand the ultimate effects of most of the contents of the Pharmacopoeia, and that they increasingly trust to a few well-tried and well-known therapeutic agents. At the moment ultraviolet rays and vitamin D, the use of vita glass, are in'fashion —thoy help rioketty children to become straightlegged, and apparently even brokendown thoroughbred horses to win races. We are giving the human body more of tho sun's rays than it has had since we covered it with clothes and hid it in houses, and kept the sun out with our smoke and fog. "Yet, alas, nothing has shown up so much as the short-sightedness of our fellow-countrymen as the way in which we have allowed, and still allow, a Black Country to grow up.After much delay Parliament has timidly passed an Act to reduce the smoke nuisance, but feared to tackle it adequately. Of recent years, too, we are realising more and more the value of clean bodies, to such an extent that the greater use of water'is creating a distinct and new problem in many districts." THE MATERNITY QUESTION. Undoubtedly, added Lord Astor, our improved factory, conditions, including better housing, had contributed much towards the better health of the community. But much still remained to be done. "In spite of the help given through welfare centres, health visitors, and insurance benefits, maternity, instead of being a normal function, is too often accompanied by sorrow, pain, ruin constitution, and death. In England, alone 3000 women die unnecessarily in child birth every year, while between 30,000 and 40,000 - 'babies, instead of bringing joy to their mothers, are born dead, or die without living a full week..