ONE MEAL A DAY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18848, 10 April 1931, Page 12

ONE MEAL A DAY.

BEER AND PLENTY OF TEA. PROMINENT CHEMIST’S BELIEFS. One of the best-known characters in London, Mr Morgan Davis, died suddenly recently. He was aged 64, and was regarded by the thousands who were acquainted with him as the hardest and fittest man of his years in the country. Mr Davies never wore underclothing, and on the coldest day he could be seen in his West End chemist shop without coat or waistcoat. It was his habit to live on one meal a day, but his food was always carefully selected, all starchy items being omitted. With his sole meal, Mr Davis drank a pint of draught beer, but the only other liquid he permitted himself was tea, of which he swallowed quarts. It was his own statement that he kept well because he worked at least 16 hours of every 24, but it was only on infrequent occasions that he slept for lofiger than five hours. Mr Davis was the inventor of a combination of salts which had to be taken with a pint of warm water, and also of a massage cream, the base of which was iodine. But he was chiefly celebrated for the way he gave massage, his customers for this including members of the Royal Family and such famous athletes as Jack Hobbs and Don Bradman, the cricketers, and O. Read, the rackets champion. Great pride was taken by Mr Darts in the condition of his skin, which resembled that of a schoolgirl, but his commonest statement was that all disease was dirt, and that no one had the right to die until he had passed the nineties. It was another of his beliefs that at 60 a man was in his prime, and that much of his youthfulness should have been retained. He could not remember when he had had a holiday, and he was always scornful of those who claimed that with increasing years less worfc should be done, and that the heart should be more carefully protected.

Mr Davies’ view was that the heart needed the same treatment as a muscle and that this could only be obtained by more or less violent exercise. He was active and at work on the day before his death, but at 1 o’clock in the morning he passed away, practically in his sleep.