LIFE’S LITTLE WANTS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 1 December 1926, Page 5

LIFE’S LITTLE WANTS.

Kemoval of Ailments,

The vast majority -of the ailments of mankind could be removed by simple means, said Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, the president of the New Health Society, in an address to the members of Whitfield’s Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Bond, London. People talked about the poor benighted savage, and yet the latter got more out. of his life than did tlie former. He had no disease of any sort, because he partook of just the food he required, and followed a wise law of nature. There was the case of the Zulus, with whom appendicitis and cancer were unknown or hardly to be found. Indigestion was talked of lightly, but there was in it the primary cause of nearly all disease. It was the first stage on the way to cancer, which never affected healthy organs. Dealing with the value of wholemeal bread, he said* that even a benevolent autocracy could have a good side to it, as Mussolini/ by-one stroke of the pen, had decreed that people in his country should eat 85 per cent of wholemeal bread. * * * * Better Medical Practice. ‘ ‘ l'he House of. Commons to-day is full of the friends of the quack doctor,” declared Dr. E. Graham Little, F.P. for London University, in an address to St. George’s Hospital Medical School. He added that Great Britain stood almost alone among civilised countries in the encouragement. which the Legislature gave to unqualified practice. Sir Humphrey Ilollcston, speaking at King’s College Hospital, advised the profession to look philosophically on the rivalry of the ‘‘amateur” doctor, who, lie thought, would remain with us unless human nature altered. “With all the spread of education,” he said, “there is now as much irregular practice, if not more, than in the past.” Sir Walter Fletcher, at the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women, suggested that the ‘‘rough and tumble” of ordinary general medical practice made it far less suitable for women than for men, and he indicated special work which women might well undertake. * * * * Swat that Fly. An Australian contemporary says the grand' old pastime of swatting Hies lias become a duty. People who used to play whist and bowls, now spend glorious hours with a patent swatter. The allegation that men have given up cricket, golf and whisky to enter flyswatting contests, is not substantiated, but it is said that octogenarians who used to have little interest in life now sit with a treacle tin in the left hand and a newspaper folded hard in the other, and swat flies from early morn till dewy eve. The family fly game necessarily requires handicaps. Grandmothers are given a thousand flies start and fly-papers. Grandfathers receive a start of five hundred flies and the treacle tin. There are penalties for breaking pictures and other furnishings.. A bluebottle counts as three and a bluetail as two.