FORTRESS AS HOSPITAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22226, 28 September 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

FORTRESS AS HOSPITAL

ANCIENT CASTLE IN WALES PAYING GUESTS DISCIPLINED f WHERE THE FAMOUS "SLIM" r In one of the most remarkable castles in Britain, famous people aro paying from fifteen to thirty guineas a week to be deprived of nearly everything; they like. When the castle was built in 1281, it was called Rhudd-ddin—th«; Red Fortress. It is still a fortress, but in a twentieth-century way. Its armaments nre a book of rules, its enemies, diseaiie, and tho temptations of late nights and rich food. Many of its patients go there to bo diagnosed and treated for illness, but some go simply to be slimmed. Luxury and indulgence are put away, and rigid diets are planned and strictly abided by. They are massaged every morning. At noon and 6 p.m. the flock of sixty well-to-do men and women goes meekly to its rooms and lies down for an hour. At 10 p.m. everybody must be in bed. No alcohol is allowed unless prescribed by a doctor. Hearty men who are used to oysters, lobsters, and saddles of mutton, public men who eat five-course lunches' and seven-course dinners, women who resist cream, all go to Ruthin Castle to eat halibut, green salads, and dry biscuits and drink lemonade for a month or more. , . , The doctors try to he as kind as possible. Before each meal they consult the patient us to what he or she would like—and then order what they think Each patient has a -aiet chart in the kitchen, and each meal is separately •'designed,' and the calories are is some jealousy, for instance between a husband eating steamed fish, and his wife with iamb cutlets.

But they laugh at themselves afterwards, and point to how many pounds they are losing. A stone a month is the average achievement. There are compensations. The castlo looks out on three sides to the lovely hills of Wales, and on the fourth, to the gentle Vale of Clwyd. And the local "pictures" are not banned —up to ten o'clock at night.