HOW TO LIVE TO 140.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 2742, 7 September 1923, Page 3

HOW TO LIVE TO 140.

HiIiNESS AS AN ACT OF FOLLY. EAT RAW FOOD. "Three score years and ten" as the normal span of life was scouted as an erroneous ideal by Dr Leonard Williams, a Harley Street specialist. Man ought to live to 120 or 140 il he paid proper attention dietary and health laws, he said. "If we got a disease we ought not to be pitied as victims, but condemned as fools." That was another of his dicta. "A man who taiKS about being a martyr to gout or rheumatism is talking arrant nonsense, and he might just as well talk about being a martyr to delirium tremens." "Man is the only animal," said Dr Williams, "who does not know how to feed himself." FOGGED BY BIAS. "While the instincts of the lower animals in this matter are increasing, man has only reason to guide him, and his reason being blurred ana fogged by every kind of bias —m which greed figures very largely—he arrives at the most fantastic ana deadly conclusions. "One of these conclusions is that the normal span of life is about 7u years. The reason we were content with three score years and ten was because we were, in matters physiological, content with a very low level of mediocrity, and had no ideals for which we were prepared to make pressing sacrifices and deny ourselves soft comforts and needless luxuries. "We must divest ourselves of tlie idea that there -was something heaven sent and inevitable about illness. "In greater or less degree, chiefly in greater all diseas is preventaable. If we get an illness it is our own fault sometimes and sometimes, but comparatively very seldom, the fault of our forbears." THE SIMPLE LIFE. When a man arived at maturity it was up to him to maintain that state of maturity as long as he could. Instead of doing so, however, he sat down and impaired his efficiency as possible by sending out S.O.S. to e\ery microbe to come and take up residence in his body. Insurance companies had drawn up a table of man's average ages and weights. At 24 he weighed list, while at 50 his average weight was 12st 41b. That was absurd, as the real normal in the latter case would be less, rather than more, than the young man's weight. His advice to everyone was to live simply in the matter of diet. There were substances called vitamines, without which no one could live. They were found in raw foods, and were relatively absent from cooked foods. When man was evolved he was placed where he could obtain all kinds of raw fruits, roots, and herbs, He did not know at what period the cooking stov e arrived, but it was qu'.te certain that it was not the invention of a Higher Power. Physiological efficiency went back to the question of diet, and they should partake of meagre fare, fresn air_ and all kinds of raw foods, dairy produce and salads.