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Otago Witness, Issue 2309, 2 June 1898, Page 48

HEALTH COLUMN.

We Eat Too Much.

He Could not be a Christian on Five

Meals a Day,

Dr Dio in the Journal of Hygiene, says: — " Large eaters are generally deficient in activity and endurance. I used to know one who tried hard to be a Christian, but failed because of too much dinner. That man was a curiosity. He woiked in a small wood- turning shop, and a(e five times a day. When he consulted me about his 'poor stomach ' I told him flatly that ha was a pig. He replied, .' You are mistaken ; I am faint half the time, and have to eat extra meals to keep up my strength.' I went at him with fact and physiology. At length he was convinced, and promised me that he would follow my prescription, which was this: Take but two meals a day.

"In 15 days his faintness disappeared, and he rapidly recovered.- To-day he is a healthy, active man, and a warm advocate of two meals a day, and moderate ones.

"Temperate people with good digestion never feel their stomachs — forget they have stomachs — while these big eaters are always hungry, faint, or bloated, troubled with eructations, acidity, diarrhoea, or some other unhappy condition of the digestive apparatus.

" Persons having a good stomach to begin with can by practice learn to digest an enormous quantity of food. If they give their whole force and vitality to this business of grinding grist they can, in the course of even a short life, grind through immense quantities. But the wiser, the more human way is to find out just how much food is needed to run the machine, exactly what fael will keep the system at the best working point, and never pass these bounds " For years the author had eaten three hearty meals a day. At length upon a careful consideration of the physiology of digestion, he thought he was probably using too much of his force in that funotion. He reduced to two meals a day. He cannot express what mental sad bodily activity be experienced.

Men with large heads and well-made bodies sometimes consume so much of their nerve force in digestion that they have nothing left with which to achieve those triumphs that otherwise would be easy to them."

Much Better than Doctoks.— " Why don't yon play golf ? " asked a medical enthusiast of the " royal game "of the writer. " I can assure you it is the best doctor in the world, and has cost me many a good patient. For a man who is weighed down by business car@3 or in a state o£ aervous collapse from over-study golf is better than all the medicuices in the pharmacopceja. Not only is the game more f ascinaticg from the very beginning than asy other, and on this account drivss away all distracting thoughts ; but the conditions under which it is played are most healthgiving. The links are situated in breezy, open places, where the air is of the purest, thus supplying an essential of health. " Then a player, however naturally adverse to exorcise, is compelled by the necessities of the game to walk a certain number of miles in pursuit of the alluring white ball. Bat the great advantage in golf is that it involves no violent exercise, as cycling, football, and similar sports do. The game is within the physical limits of even the coastitutioaally w eak, and is thus eqaally good for young and old of both sexes." — Caseeirs Saturday Journal.