DIET AND DISEASE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20022, 12 February 1927, Page 23

DIET AND DISEASE.

TO THE EDITOB. Sir -Although all credit is due to those doctors who have dcalt wjth tho of diet and disease at the Medical Con cress in this city, the position remains very unsatisfactory. It is unnecessary to quote laymen and food reform enthusiasts to whom the term ‘•crank would crushingly applied by those who have little or no knowledge of dietetics, when such emphatic statements as the following by men of high repute in the medical profession demand, at least, earnest considcratloDr Robert Bell (in charge of Cancer Research at Battersea Hospital, London): “So much importance do I attach to dietetics in the treatment of cancer that I am quite convinced that regulation 01 diet may be proved to be the only treatment really necessary. We need never expect to enjoy good health if we permit our natural and easily satisfied appetites to be overruled and_ prostituted by what is termed the culinary art. Dr Valentine Knaggs (one of the leading dietitians of to-day): “Even a little elementary knowledge of food chemistry and human physiology would show that a sugared tea, white bread, parboiled vegetables and meat diet is the main factor which' fills both the outpatient and mpatient departments of the hospitals to overflowing.” , , , ... Sir William Arbuthnot Lane (one of the King’s physicians): “There is no deadly secret about cancer. The whole question is one of diet, and the only way out of the position is by public education into the correct way of feeding.* Consideration for your space restricts my quotations to the above and to the following from a lecture given about three years ago by Dr Stuart Moore, of this city: “The thesis I would lay before you for consideration is that .the most important factor ill the preparation of soil (i.e., the body) for disease and in the production of disease is dietetic error. ... I believe that if preventive medicine were to concentrate on the question of diet tho character of medical practice would change; surgery would fade into insignificance/ In the latter part of last year two medical men lectured within a fortnight of each other, in a North Island town. The first replied with an emphatic affirmative to a question whether it is not an admitted medical fact that blindness can be caused by diet. The second lecturer, who also stressed the vital importance of diet, was asked whether it wore still a fact that of the six years’ medical course in New Zealand only one week was devoted to lectures on diet, and that these are on obsolete linos. He replied : “Well, that may be so, but I had none.” The appalling diet for sick persons in most of our hospitals, public and private, is hardly surprising m such circumstances. That it is possible to cause blindness by diet, surely stamps as reasonable the theory that our food may bo one of the most potent causes of all disease. Whilst so many able men all the world over—doctors, scientists, and chemists—are to-day, supporting this theory, it seems inconceivable (hat the matter of diet receives such scant attention from those responsible for tho training of tho medical fraternity.—l am, etc., H. W. L. February 0.