HEALTH HINTS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LI, Issue 9068, 14 April 1906, Page 6

HEALTH HINTS.

THE VALUE OF WATER

Dr Edward F. Willoughby, lecturing at the Institute of Hygiene recently said that one of the most serious erroms in the dietary of most persons was that they

drank too little.

Water was not only

the chief oonstitutent of the body, but was fclso, what was far more important/, the vehicle in which the innumerable chemical changes taking place in the tissues were conducted. Without water no elimination of waste matter could take place by way of skin, kidneys, or alimentary canal. It was truly the basis of life, for without it, even in the midst of plenty of other foods, life could not be sustained fox any length of time. Entombed miners who had water but no food lived longer than those who had food but no water. The error was partly due .to the scare conrceoming the drinkable character of tapwater, even with all the modern contrivances ior ensuring its purity and goodness. Our ancestors, who Wiero dependent upon the village pump, with its attendant typhoid, probably suffered less mortality from disease brought about by impure water than do we from our dread of the pure article now bo lavishly provided. "It is." said the lecturer, "another kind of hydrophobia, against which ; no preventive measures have yet been taken — far more potent- for widespread evil than the terrible scourge against which so maay measures have been adopted by a well!- meaning and beneficent Government." (

LIFE AND SLEEP.

One of the .newest fads of the medical world is in© sleep cure. According to the physician who has sought to introduce his ideas among the Parisians one sleeps entirely too little. It is his' argument that one lives a certain, length of time, and that this time (sickness not considered) is -extended over a long ot 6hont period according to the temperament of the person. He cites in support of his theory the longevity of the negroes and declares that they attain a ripe old age simply .because they sleep when work is nob a jsolutely essential.

His treatment consists of Bending his patkjit to bed and making him sleep. Eight hours a day one may leave his bed and mingle with, the world as he pleases, but not only must the. other sixteen be spent in bed, but the patient must actually be asleep. On his discharge the patient is warned that if lie would live his allotted time lie roust husband his waking hours by

spending as much time in sleep as possible. The physician declares that with a child properly trained to sleep twelve to fourteen hours out of the twenty-four tine attainment of the hundredth year would be a matter of course and not an occurrence of rarity.