UNSOLVED PROBLEMS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XV, 11 April 1896, Page 403

UNSOLVED PROBLEMS.

A FEW months ago it was announced that a well-known physician had been studying the effect of sugar, taken with the food, on human muscles and their capacity for work. That is, he had tested the result of adding sugar to the food of a man, and of withholding it, all other conditions being as nearly equal as possible.

The test was the amount of work the man could do without fatigue when he had, and when he had not, taken sugar with his food. Of course one person, studying this problem alone, having but a few people upon whom he could practice, would not be able to reach an authorative decision of the question. Therefore, we almost hesitate to give his conclusion that the use of sugar made a distinct gain of muscular power.

It is marvellously strange that a question so important in both a physical and a commercial sense, should not have been determined absolutely, by a course of careful experiment, not ten years, but two hundred or two thousand years ago.

A large amount of raw sugar has been imported into this colony. Was this a waste, or was the sugar true muscle-making food ?

An answer to that question might be of the utmost importance to nations, and to individual men and women. But although theories and guesses areabundant

enough, the facts which are derived from exact experiment are almost lacking. There are people all over the land recording the temperature and the barometer readings thrice daily, to provide material for the deduction of meteorological law. Is there in progress anywhere a series of experiments to give final answer to disputed questions of hygiene ? And is it not strange that we must reply no, when, nevertheless, of all the professions, the medical and surgical professions are to-day the most progressive ? We are not generalizing upon a single case. No one knows absolutely, as the result of long and carefully conducted experiment, the effects of tobacco or of alcohol taken in small quantities into the human system. Yet the truth about this matter is of importance to hundreds of millions of human beings. Of course their deleterious effects when taken in excess, and the fact that moderate use leads to excess, are universally recognised. We shall mention, briefly two hygienic discoveries of the present generation to illustrate still further how haphazard a matter is our progress in this direction. Fifty years ago it was accepted as a fundamental law of health as old as the human race, that one should not take a cold bath when heated by exercise. Think of that, boys, you who plunge into cold water after a vigorous game of tennis !

Again, only within a few years has it been ascertained, accidentally, that the previous accepted law that one should not eat shortly before retiring was a great mistake.

It might not be a bad idea to organise a Society for the Study of the Human Body, whose members should observe and record systematically facts to serve in the establishment of hygienic laws.