WATER AT A DISCOUNT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue II, 11 July 1896, Page 45

WATER AT A DISCOUNT.

IT needed a very bold man to resist the medical testimony of three centuries ago against water drinking (says the Hospital). Few writers can be found to say a good word for it. One or two only are concerned to maintain that ‘ when begun in early life it maybe pretty freely drunk with impunity,’ and they quote the curious instance given by Sir Thomas Elyot in his * Castle of Health,’ 1541, of the Cornish men, ‘ many of the poorer sort, which never or very seldom drink any other drink, be notwithstanding strong of body and like, and live well until they be of a great age.' Thomas Cogan, the medical schoolmaster of Manchester fame, confessed in his * Haven of Health,’ 1589, designed for the use of students, that he knew some who drink cold water at night or fasting in the morning without hurt ; and Dr. James Hart, writing about fifty years later, could even claim among his acquaintance * some honest and worshipful ladies who drink little other drink and yet enjoy more perfect health than most of them that drink of the strongest.’ The phenomenon was undeniable, but the natural influence was none the less to be resisted. Sir Thomas Elyot himself is very certain, in spite of the Cornish men, that ‘ there be in water causes of divers diseases, as swelling of the spleen and liver.’ He complains oddly that ‘it flitteth and swim meth,’ and concludes that ‘ to young men and them that be of hot complexions it doth less harm, and sometimes it profiteth, but to them that are feeble, old, and melancholy it is not convenient.’ ‘Water is not wholesome cool by itself for an Englishman,’ was the version of Andrew Borde—monk, physician, bishop, embassador and writer on sanitation—as the result of a life’s experience. And to quote the Englishman’s doctor :

Both water and small beer, we make no question Are enemies to health and good digestion.

But the most formal indictment against water is that of Venner, who, writing in 1622, ponderously pronounces ‘ to dwellers in cold countries it doth very’ greatly deject their appetites, destroy the natural heat and overthrow the strength of the stomach, and consequently confounding the concoction is the cause of crudities, fluctuations and windiness in the body.’