"DARK AGES OF CITY LIFE."

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18404, 10 June 1925, Page 12

"DARK AGES OF CITY LIFE."

SUNLIGHT AND HEALTH. (niOJl OtTR OWS COEFESrOXDEST.) LONDON, April 30. Dr. C. W. Saleeby, medical man, author, and publicist, was present at « gathering of the Leeds Women's- Luncheon Club, and spoke on the subject "Sunlight ajid Health." He emphasised the importance, even the necessity, of sunlight to health. It was damnable, he declared, that children should grow up hunch-backed, with crooked limbs, and bad health, merely for lack of sunlight. And, from the national point of view, how were they going to stand up against the sun-fed and milk-fed children of the United States, Canada, and New Zealand? We had had an example in the cricket matches in Australia during the past few months. Future generations would look back with horror on these dark ages of city life, and would wonder how we were able to exist. One of the pioneers of sunlight for health, said Dr. Saleeby, was Florence Nightingale. When the Netley Hospital was being built she protested against the lack of provision for the admission of sunlight. No support for her ideas was forthcoming, however, from the architects and doctors of the time. The scheme was continued, and the hospital stood now as what was the last monument, he hoped, of the dark ages. It was left to a present-day doctor to take sensible measures in connexion with that, disease of darkness, rickets. He made a study of the question, compared notes with medical missionaries in all parts of the world, and in the end he reached the conclusion that where thero was plenty of sunlight there was no rickets. Dr. Saleeby said he wanted to do something to destroy the smoke evil, to bring back the light. The question was in the forefront just now, but if people were not keen about it it .would slide back into obscurity. He asserted that in ten years' time or so we should be "radiating*' our food—putting it out in the direct rays of the sun to be soaked in its life-giving rays.