HEALTH COLUMN

Otago Witness, Issue 1974, 19 September 1889, Page 37

HEALTH COLUMN

The Natural Diet.

The food which is moat enjoyed is the diet we call bread and fruit. In all my long medioal career, extending over 40 years, I have rarely known an instance in which a child baa not preferred fruit to animal food X have many times been called upon to treat children for stomachic disorders, induced by pressing upon them animal to the exclusion of fruit diet, and have seen the best results occur from the practice of reverting to the use of fruit in the dietary.

I say it without the least prejudice, as a lesson learned from simple experience, that the most natural diet for the young, after the natural milk diet, is fruit and" whole- meal bread, with milk and water for drink. The desire for this same mode of sustenance is often continued in after years, as if the resort to flesh were a forced and artificial feeding, which required long and persistent habit to establish its permanency as a part of the system of every day life.

How strongly this preference taste for fruit over animal food prevails is shown by the simple fact of the retention of these foods in the mouth. Fruit is retained to be tasted and relished. Animal food, to use a common phrase, is " colted. " There is a natural desire to retain the delicious fruit for full mastication ; there is no such desire, except in the trained gourmand, for the retention of animal substance.

One further fact which 1 have observed — and that too often to discard it as a fact of great moment — is that when a person of mature years has, for a* time, given up voluntarily the u&e of animal food in favour of vegetable, the sense of repugnance to animal food is soon so markedly developed that a return to it is overcome with the utmost difficulty. Neither is this a mere fancy or fad peculiar to sensitive men or oversentimental women. I have been surprised to see it manifested in men who were the very reverse of sentimental, and who were, in fact, quite ashamed to admit themselves guilty of any such weakness. I have heard those who, gone over from a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food to pure vegetable diet, speak of feeling low under the new system, and declare that they must needs give it up in consequence ; but I have found even these (without exception) declare that they infinitely preferred the simpler, purer, and, as it seemed to them, more natural food, plucked from the prime source of food, untainted by its passage through another animal body — "Longman's Magazine."

Tuberculosis from Barrings. — Dr Yon Duhriug has reported a case in which tuberculosis was transmitted by the earrings of a girl vrho died of consumption to another girl. Shortly after the second girl commenced to wear the earrings, an ulcer containing tubercle bacilli formed on her let ear and she subsequently developed pulmonary consumption.

To Cuke Cramp. — A physician says: " When I have a patient who is subject co cramp, I always advise him to provide himself with a strong cord. A long garter will do jif nothing else is handy. When the cramp comes on take the cord, wind it around the leg over the place that is cramped and take an end in each hand and give it a sharp pull, one tha£ will hurt a little, Instantly the cramp will cease, and the sufferer can go to bed assured it will not come on again that night."

The Age at Which to Wed. — M. Korosi, of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, has collected about 30,000 data and has come to the following conclusion : Mothers under 20 years of age and fathers under 24 have children more weakly than parents of riper age. Their children are more subject to pulmonary diseases. The healthiest children are those whose fathers are from 25 to 40 years of age. M. Korosi says, and most medical men endorse this view, that the best marriages are those in which the husband is senior to the wife. — Philadelphia Record.

Vaccination and Diphtheria. — It is claimed that two professors conneoted with the Pasteur Institute have discovered the generative microbe of diphtheria, and that a preventive of this disease by means of vaccine virus is expected to follow. Should this expectation be realised, the discovery and its successful application will certainly take rank among the most important triumphs in the realm of medioal science. - The prevalence of diphtheria, especially in the principal cities, and the very large proportion of fatal cases, is little dreamed of excepting by- those- who are giving; special attention to the subject. N In Brooklyn, !N.Y. r for instance, there were, in 1888,^984 deaths from diphtheria; which probably .represented 3000 cases, — Scientific American.

A Warning to Eatebs ob 1 Fish. — Another warning of the dangers that lurk in the commonest articles of food I A milk-oarrier at Kentish Town ate part of a mackerel, was seized with violent pain the next day, became delirious and died two days later. Dr Dunlop, the medical superintendent of the infirmary where the unfortunate man died, declares that " the gills of a mackerel undergo fermentation, and that no part of the head or near the head should be eaten after 48 hours of the fish being caught.' 1 The deceased had eaten the part nearest, the head. This is a serious warning, for, there seems no reason why the gills of other fish should not be liable to the same process of fermentation.

Why Meats Poison.— When people are poisoned by eating tinned meats it is not because there was poison in the meat before the can was opened, but because the meat had been allowed to develop the poison of putrefaction after the can was opened. For instance, it was not the tinned salmon that poisoned a family who had eaten it with impunity the first day after it was opened, out it was the salmon that was spoiled by 48 hours' exposure to the hot and humid atmosphere. It is very rare that anyone is made sick by metallic salts in canned foods. The only metal that may cause poisoning in the case of these foods is lead, and this is not likely to be found in tinned foods. It is, however, possible that poisoning may occur from the solder, but it is highly improbable from the excellent manner in which the tins are made.