HEALTH

Evening Star, Issue 21751, 20 June 1934, Page 5

HEALTH

ADDRESS BY MR J. RENFREW WHITE Part of the programme organised in connection with the educational course for young farmers was a health talk yesterday by Mr J. Renfrew White. ' - The lecturer sought in the first place to explain the real meaning of health by variations of spelling and form in the word itself. It could be spelt “ whole-th,” “ well-th,’ : “ hale-th,” and “ weal-th.” To be healthy was to be whole, hale, and well. That collection of words presented everything there was in the whole business of health. Health and wealth were actually the same thing, and pursuing one they must pursue the other. There was one aspect of the search for health which must be realised before there could be any hope of success. It applied to their cattle, their horses, or their children. They must consider the whole question of health, look at every aspect, and not make the mistake of concentrating on any single phase of it, unduly emphasising a particular means to or cause of health. It was because too many people looked at the question from one side only that there was so much quackery in the world. The speaker then went on to compare the human body to a fire which could not burn without fuel. As soon as the fuel gave out the fire must die. Cut off the fuel and the fire must go out in a short time, but cut off the supply of oxygen and it must go out in a few minutes. It was the same with the human body. It depended for its life and its fire on its fuel, the food with which it was fed. This fuel was the carbon which was so necessary to the fire. And it must be made available in the "proper quantities, not only to keep the fires of life burning, but to keep them from burning too fiercely or too dully. Actually, it was easier to cook to death than to freeze to death. The body must have air as well as fuel, pure fresh air all the time. Fresh air was of the greatest importance, hut not only in its contrast to foul air. They should always keep their windows open, keep their clothing as light as they could become accustomed to. This was not so much to avoid foul air as to enable the body to get rid of the surplus heat it generates. Open air was one of the secrets of health. Why should they keep children inside for the greater part of the day—five hours in school ? Heaven knew how many hours in their mother’s kitchen —and then when they ‘developed ailments they suddenly shot them into

wi«v«* m»v fresh air to be cured, that was baldly logical. Why not keep them in the open air for every possible minute of their lives instead of waiting until the damage was done. It sounded foolish, but it was amazing how much that was done. On the subject of food Mr White commenced with milk, with its mineral salts, proteins, and vitamins, the basic food designed by Nature for the encouragement of growth of all animals. Cheese, also, was a building food because it contained all the constituent parts of milk. Butter was more of a fuel food because it was not composed of all the valuable parts of milk. Children needed a pint and a-lmlf of milk per day to get their full ration of growth food. At present the children of Otago were consuming on an average no more than a third of a pint per day. Was it no wonder that the standard was not high as far as child health was concerned?

Why should they send all their butter and cheese to England? England did not want it. at least not all of,-it. But their children needed it. The difficulty was that the country regarded "its milk products as something to be sold, something which could make money. They got their money, bought their American motor cars,; their machinery or the production of more, foods for their horses, cattle, and pigs, and all the time their children went without. When would the country wake up to the fact that its children came first of all ?

Another important factor in health was in avoidance of poisons in the body. Two of the most important were well enough known to them —alcohol and tobacco. Both tastes were pleasant, but they were enslaving, and they wrought tremendous havoc with health. When they came to a health crisis in their lives they were unable to withstand strain if they had poisoned themselves with such things. Millions of people in the world were poisoning themselves every day, and one of the reasons for it was that others were making money out of it. Millions of pounds were made out of cigarettes, but they would probably find that not one of the cigarette millionaires would smoke a cigarette himself. Of course, there were other poisons that found their way into the body, but these two were the most deleterious because they were the most common. He was not regarding the question from a moral point of view, but purely from the standpoint of the effect of these poisons on the health.

One questioner wanted to know how Mr White explained the fact that most very old men were smokers. The answer was that they were the few survivors. All the rest were dead. The whole thing about drinking and smoking was the question of its effect. Most people got pleasure from it, but they must remember that if they enjoyed