HEALTHY RACE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 177, 28 June 1941, Page 8

HEALTHY RACE.

WAR MYSTERY OF BRITISH PEOPLE. The United States is sending to Britain a committee of American medical men to try and find out. why the people have come through the winter’s “blitz” with better health than in the years of peace. Medical men generally are completely baffled bv the nation’s fitness. They * feared that, alter nights of crowding in air-raid shelters and exposure to all weathers on A.R.P. and fire-watching, epidemics would sweep the country like a prairie fire. In fact, there have been fewer cases of scarlet fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and typhoid fever, and only Half the number of deaths from influenza. Whooping cough and meningitis fiave alone been rather more prevalent than usual.

Britain’s own doctors offer various explanations of the mystery, among them the dispersal of densely populated areas, the improved system of health supervision, the spread of education in preventive measures, fewer people in public places. All. however, are agreed that the husv. hazardous life led by 45,000.000 people leaves them neither the time nor the inclination to brood over minor- ailments. The war has taken them “out of themselves.”