DRINKS AND GOLF.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 520, 1 August 1932, Page 5

DRINKS AND GOLF.

Sunday Restrictions at British Spas. WHY PATIENTS LEAVE HOME. (Special to the “ Star.”) LONDON, June 24. Sunday restrictions placed on patients at English health resorts are held by eminent Harley Street medical men to be the reason why so many of their patients prefer Continental spas. At a conference of the British Health Resorts Association they supported a declaration made by Lieu-tenant-Colonel R. H. Elliot, F.R.C.S., that if convalescents and their relatives were told they might not play golf or billiards on a Sunday or w’ere forbidden to ask friends into hotels for drinks after ten o’clock at night they w’ould desert British spas and go where they could get on any day of the week what to them were innocent amusements. “ Convalescents and their relatives demand amusement,” said Colonel Elliot. “ They get it abroad, so if you are to catch them and hold them you must provide it here. I am very nearly a teetotaller, but I do assure you that these points are constantly raised in the consulting rooms of the British Isles, and they constitute a real difficulty in getting our patients to recuperate in Britain.

“ We can keep in this country a large amount of money that is now going out as an adverse invisible export in sums being taken to the Continent by those in search of health. If w’e are to succeed there must be no jealousies and no profiteering. If we lose the opportunity it will never come again.” Sir Humphrey Rolleston, who presided, said the conference was intended to overcome insular modesty, which made for preference of health resorts abroad to those at their doors.