THE WAY TO HEALTH

Otago Witness, Issue 3510, 21 June 1921, Page 42

THE WAY TO HEALTH

Slit JAMES CANTLIE ON SOME CAUSES OF DEGENERACY. Sir James Cuntiie, lecturing- on ‘The Body in Health"’ at the Incorporated Institute of Hygiene, London, took the opportunity to expose in vigorous fashion and to denounce some o£ the common practices winch were the cause ot bad health. We could not raise a strong nation on rotten teeth, said -Sir Janies, yet we persisted in "taking food and giving" it to our infants so hot that it was ruinous to the teeth. He would like to enlist everyone in that room (the place was packed to discomfort) in a national society for the prevent on of decaying teeth. As to clothing", his formula was one pound of it to a stone of body weight. Too light clothing and unnecessary exposure, to cold were prejudicial, and once when tie examined the bathers who broke the ice. to go into the Serpentine he found one-third of them in the initial stages of Bright’s disease. it was a mistake to think of the heart as a dedicate organ. It was mostly what we made it, and it could be strengthened by walking exercises, simply increasing the usual number of paces from 76, say, to 100 to 110 per minute. We did not want a muscle likes a leg of mutton to drive a quill, and extreme exercise simply thickened the muscles of the chest without widening it at all. Their doctors did not tell them all this for fear they might be turned away. —(Laughter.) It was easy to estimate in foot-pounds or foot-tons the energy expended by a human body in a day, and so to judge of the amount of work that was being done in certain directions. Going upstairs made several demands, and the girl who was climbing flights many times a day naturally sought her relict on the top of a bus when she went out. A day’s work for a man had been 300 foot-ions, but it was now reduced to 150; he went late to his work and came away early, and did not expend the energy that bis father did. He had got lazy ; the muscular power of his heart was going down; his arm was getting- unfit for its work, and he was becoming a degenerate man, producing a nation which had lost in body and spirit, and had run down one-half in physique. The terrible business of "strike,” "strike.” "strike,’’ and reducing the labour of the men until they wore incapable of doing their work, had brought the trade union to become the Sluggards’ Protection Society of Carlyle. As things were, men were not doing enough work to keep their hearts strong, and Sir James thought he would have to invite them across to his school of physical "jerks" to cure the evil. It was incumbent on them all to be well clothed and to take sufficient exercise out of doors. The healthiest-looking baby he had ever seen was one at the nieghbouving Chinese Legation, who was out for two hours every morning and afternoon, rain or snow.