THE BROTHERLY WAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 246, 16 October 1937, Page 5

THE BROTHERLY WAY

I’HYSICAL AM) MENTAL WEL- . 1 ALE CO-ORDINATION OF SOCIAL SER- : VICES (H) Dear People,—“Let man return to j his eats!”—a free-and-easy translation I of Pierro Blanchet’s laimhar phrase [ (“Revenons a nos Moutons”) is par- i ticularly applicable tc- matters nutritional. Sir Richard Gregory reminds | the world that much patient and i laborious investigation has still to be ; undertaken, before the relative importance of nutrit ion, heredity and en-! vironment may be fully understood as factors in the incidence of disease, or in the. promotion of sound health. Sir Richard amplilies his remarks to the effect that nutrition is already a powerful influence in the moulding ol its two complementary factors, heredity and environment. Man must therefore return to his eats, humbly acknowledging nutrition to be largely' the basis of sound physical and mental | health. From this, he may go forward j to the fact that better physical con-i dition will undoubtedly bring about, improved intellectual health in those three spheres of human activity upon whose operations (as W. S. Lang reminds us) depends man’s ultimate well-being,—i.e., the sphere of freedom of thought, of political freedom and of fraternity in economics. So long as the application of the principle of scientific nutrition shall continue to be neglected, therefore, so long will civilisation be retarded in its progress by that listless, apathetic attitude of mind which rests content to have its physical, moral and mental bodies fed, clothed, housed and marshalled to the bidding of a political system which seeks to dominate the essential complementary factors to racial health and welfare—intellectual freedom and economic fraternity. Domination is not co-ordination. There is no health in it. A race of beings lacking in health, i.e., in those physical and mental essences which Nature has decreed shall be the very stuff of which ils systems shall be built, cannot be expected to appreciate the principles ol political and intellectual freedom. Thus once again man must return to his eats —back to nutrition, upon the right ordering of which both in the physical and mental world are based all physical, moral and intellectual health and well-being.

Co-ordination in Creation. Nature is one vast nutritive system. The study of nutrition goes deep into the originating causes of physical and mental phenomena. When the foundations of the earth were laid, masses of its rock-liquid were cooled off into the original Plutonic rock-substances. Embedded in those primeval rocks were stores of the veritable “salts of the earth”—those rare minerals which mean life and sanity to the race of living beings which eventually crowned Nature’s scheme. By a gradual process of “weathering” of the original Plutonic rocks, the sedimentary rocks were formed. They in their turn drew into themselves quantities of the valuable mineral salts embodied in the Plutonics. Again, by the slow process of the “weathering” of the sedimentary rocks, the upper thin layer of fertile s il came into being, taking thousands of years to form its layers of humus and its beds of forests, plants and grasses. The study of nutrition, therefore, goes down through the deeper levels of the soils, into the realms investigated by geology; it reaches up through the sciences concerned with the deeperrooted plants and trees which bring to the surface and eventually to man’s service those invaluable mineral salts originally embodied in the formation of the earth’s substance and upon a supply of which his health, strength and sanity are dependent; through agriculture, botany, aquiculture, biochemistry, physics, medicine, physiology. psychology and ethics, to the highest principles as yet evolved by the mind of man.

Co-ordination in Science. In fact, there is scarcely a science in existence which has not already brought its fruits and laid them reverently at the feet of that science of sciences which deals with man himself; there is certainly not a science in existence which in increasing degree will not continue to shower its benefits upon that science which is attempting to co-ordinate investigations into the nutritive systems of the earth, the soil, the sea, the plant, the animal and the race of mankind. Long before Dr. Alexis Carrel published his philosophy in regard to “The Science of Man” together with his views upon the necessity for synthesising all current knowledge with a view to its early application to the well-being of the race, a voluntary movement in New Zealand had already attempted to form such a synthesis and such an application. The members of the society in question (the Physical and Mental Welfare Society of New Zealand) include scientists, doctors, dentists, educationists, psychiatrists, writers, speakers and social workers. Some of its members have not been trained to fill any special avocation in social service, but are genuinely imbued with a desire to “do something” to lessen the total sum of human misery; and for such workers, the P.M.W. Society has a humanitarian branch (the brotherly way) to which they may attach themselves.

Co-ordination in Application. A feature of the organisation of the P.M.W. Society, a special meeting for whose formal incorporation Professor F. P. Worley and Dr. Guy B. Chapman are calling in Auckland next week, is the power it has already proved to wait upon co-ordinated effort. Physical education experts attached to the P.M.W. Society do not claim that racial fitness and prevention of ill-health may be attained by physical measures alone, be they educational or recreative; its educationists believe that knowledge and the application of knowledge may best be assimilated by those whose physical and mental health is at least at par; its mental hospital workers are convinced that the only hope of prevention and amelioration of mental disability depends upon the more rational attitude to health now slowly evolving, being extended to sufferers from nervous diseases; and its believers in health insurance recognise that disease will not be prevented oy any national insurance scheme, unless it be scientifically formulated to that end by the inclusion of all the relevant factors. Co-ordination in action by the P.M.W. Society is effected by the different phases of social service having representation upon the P.M.W. advisory board, to the end that all perl inent points of view may have

consideration, before action is taken. As Oxford City pointed the way, by its co-ordination of health services, to the great British health campaign, it is hoped that the harmonious and effective working of the P.M.W. Society may point a moral to the Government of New Zealand in regard to possible benefits that may be derived from the establishment of a non-party Health Board, representative of the whole of the various departments and sciences concerned with national health and welfare.—Yours as ever,