HOST OF NEW IDEAS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17245, 11 January 1924, Page 7

HOST OF NEW IDEAS.

DR THACKER’S VIEWS. FOUND LYTTELTON DEAD. Dr H. T. J. Thacker, who returned to Christchurch this morning after his four to America, Great Britain and the Continent, has a host of new ideas for application here. Dr Thacker spent between three Weeks and a month in Franch. He speaks with enthusiasm pf the* wonderful recovery mado in the devastated regions. Where everything was an absolute ruin not very long ago, the country is now covered with splendid crops, many of which were being harvested when he was there. The villages that have been re-built have been rebuilt splendidly, he said, and form a striking contrast £0 the villages between Chateau Thierry and Paris that escaped damage to any great extent and which, consequently, still remain ip their original form. These villages were very insanitary.' The wiping out of the qld villages in ihe north would probably lead to the rebuilding of the whole of them ifi a much better way. “Anybody who has liQt been there can have no conception,•( said Dr Thacker, “of the havoc that Was wrought in the war. )Vq went as far east &s Verdun jvnd St- Mihiel. We saw the cemeteries and were able to appreciate wonderful care the French and Americans (ire giving to them. All along the lino are the French monmuments of victory. "Where the armistice was signed, near Chantilly,* there Is a splendid monument which depicts the German eagle strung up by its feet. In Paris at the Pantheon there is a wonderful picture giving a panorama of the whole war. It took us four hours to look over it. It represents France and all the Allies. So far as France as a whole is concerned it . has made a wonderful recovery domestically, but the same does not apply politically, They expect that all they arc spending in reconstruction wil be recovered from the Germans or taken out of the Ruhr, Dr Thacker devoted some time to making himself acquainted with the latest medical developments. “ Alongside medicine and surgery," lie said, “ there is standing a third greathealth restorer which is called physiotherapy. It includes message, hydrotherapy, heat of ail kinds and electric therapy, including tho X-rays, violet, ultra violet and infra red rays, radiant light lamps, raduim treatment of all kinds or and high frequency currents, In America a result of the war has been that- the physiotherapy experts have demanded that their treatment must Ims accepted as special treatment, not to he ordered by the physician sending the patient, bub by the people who carry out the treatment, There is a. strong belief that big surgical operations are to be cub out within the next five years." Dr Thacker also referred to the new school of dietry which had as its object the cutting out of candy feast, which was the way they described the eating of sugar and white starch, Dr Thacker said that the hotels in this country could not say that the cutting out ef licenses would kill them, because the hotels in America wore working now without licenses, and were doing better than they had done in the days of licenses, They get themselves out to serve the people in many ways in the matter of dance halls, meals and so on. “ A thing that struck mo when we reached Lyttelton" he said, "was that it. was dead—absolutely dead. The South Island in being short circuited and everything is being handled in the north. We w’.ll have to do something ’ -stic here to end tliifi state of