OUR AUCKLAND LETTER.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 671, 4 October 1921, Page 5

OUR AUCKLAND LETTER.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

THE GREY LYNN MURDER MYSTERY.

Auckland, September 30.

Is the Grey Lynn murder to be added to the long list of the world’s mysteries ? The lengthy adjourned inquest touching the death of Francis Jew has resulted in no evidence being adduced sufficiently strong to warrant the arrest of any person, and it really seems, at the time of writing, as though the death of this poor young fellow is to go unavenged. The knowledge that we have a brutal and callous murderer in our midst is certainly very far from re-assuring. But perhaps he has shaken the dust of Auckland from his feet long ere tins. In any case the matter has been left in a very unsatisfactory # state. The police have been asked to find the answer to a riddle, and have been compelled, apparently, to give it up. , There was some talk, a while ago, of the reward offered for the detection of the assassin, being increased, it being considered that £250 was inadequate. Well, I think myself it ought to be increased. I should like to see it made a £IOOO The strong probability is that the secret the authorities are so anxious to learn is known to somebody besides the murderer, and it is quite on the cards that the offer of a substantial reward might tempt that somebody to speak.

THE PLAGUE. If, as the doctors telln us, rats are the chief disseminators of plaguegerm once the terrible disease gets a footing in a place, I fear it will go hard with Auckland if plague breaks out here. There are probably millions of these rodents in Auckland, and" they are by no means confined ,to. the water front, and the warehouses. There are any number of old wooden dwellings in this city (relics of the early clays), many of them with rotting foundations. I am not referring to the poorer quarters of the city, although I daresay things .are bad enough in these localities. I am writing of residential thoroughfares close to town where the houses command high rentals. Matty of these dwellings are fairly swarming with rats, and ought, by rights, L o be pulled down. Tht City Council, it is true, supplies rat poison free ot charge to all and sundry. But the demand for the stuff, I understand, has fallen off a good deal since it was discovered that the rats were thriving, increasing and multiplying on the “poison.” The position is becoming exceedingly serious, and it is to be feared that our City Fathers are not sufficiently alive to it. The Minister of Public Health advocates a general campaign against rats. But a mere recommendation of that kind is of little use. Steps ought to be taken to see that the Minister’s advice is acted upon, and compulsion should be used if necessary.

HEALING THE SICK. There are probably more irregular professors of the healing art in Auckland than in any of the three other big centres of the Dominion. Some of these practitioners style themselves mental healers, psychophysicians, meta-physcians, etc., etc. It is the practice of a section of the public to sneer at these people, and to call them quacks and mountebank. Perhaps some of them are. yet two cases have recently come under my notice in which the so-called quacks have performed most remarkable cures. -In the first case a returned soldier, who came bacK to New Zealand with a badly-strained heart, has been, to my personal knowledge, restored to health, after the case had been practically abandoned as hopeless. “For about two years the patient was under medical care, and, as I say, to no purpose. Then, although not without some reluctance, he consulted one of the many “drugless healers” practising in this city. Two weeks later his health was greatly improved. Now, about four weeks later, he is almost' himself again. He has increased considerably in weight, has regained his appetite, and recovered his He no longer suffers from the distressing pains that afflicted him at intervals, andi s, in a word, another man. His case, I venture to say, is quite as remarkable in its way as any of those recorded in connection with Ratana. But religion has had nothing whatever to do with his cure. The man responsible for the latter is regarded by many as a charlatan. Yet he has done in a month what doctors failed to effect in two years. I am not acquainted with him myself. But I know his patient intimately. The second' case was just ,as extraordinary, in fact, in some respects it was more so because in this case the patient, also suffering from strained heart, was told that

he would never be fit to do another day’s hard work. But he recovered all his old health, strength and vigour after a very few weeks’ treatment at the hands of a so-called “quack,” and is now doing hard, muscular work as of yore. THE STAFF £>F LIFE. Auckland food reformers are still agitating for whole-meal bread, but while 95 per cent, of the population —Ol thereabouts —demand bread as white as they can get it, the bakers are not very likely to bother themselves about the production of bread that comparatively few people want or will eat. And yet medical men are unanimous in declaring that wholemeal bread—the genuine article that is, and not a mere imitation—■■ is immensely more nutritious than white bread, although it may not to all eyes present such an inviting appearance as the latter. The ordinary white loaf has been well described as “anamic” bread, and a great English authority said recently that the growing tendency of the age to nerve trouble was probably due to our v moving from our diet those essentials to good health which nature has hidden in the husk of the grain, and “which man in his ignorance discards.”