HOW TO BECOME A CENTENARIAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7788, 6 November 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW TO BECOME A CENTENARIAN.

Br. Burggraevb, a learned professor of the University of Ghent, has just published a remarkable work in which he endeavours to prove that anybody who will take the trouble to follow his instructions may become a centenarian. His system is merly a system of renovation, and is simplicity itself. The great panacea for all ills which he professes to have discovered is salt, the rational use of which, he says, is a sure preserver of life. He affirms that good health is not a matter of chance or constitution; the laws which regulate human life are calm and regular phenomena, and all we have to do is to take care that they shall develop themselves without obstruction. According to his theory salt is the great regularising agent. If the blood be too rich, salt will clarify it; if the blood be too poor, salt will strengthen it and furnish it with the necessary elements. Dr. Burggraeve quotes several examples in support of the sovereign virtue which he attributes to salt. Formerly, in Holland the greatest punishment which existed for offending soldiers was to give them unsalted bread. After a few months of this regime the culprits almost invariably died. In Saxony, at the end of the last century, a terrible epidemic reigned solely through the want of salt. The Dutch savant furthermore assures us that salt is an infalliable cure for consumption aad choral. (The Russian peasants once saved themselves from a plague by putting salt in their milk.) He estimates that the quantity of salt which every adult in ordinary health should consume daily is two-thirds of an ounce. In conclusion, he asserts that if the world would only take to salt, centenarians would become almost as common as new-born babies.