GAMBLING AND CLIMATE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2057, 18 April 1907, Page 4

GAMBLING AND CLIMATE.

The bitter cry of the British spa may, the Medical Press thinks, assume a less plaintive note in the future if the present French Government adhere to their intention firmly to enforce t-lieir new antigambling law. “It has always been easily explicable on rational grounds why Knglisli people should prefer the Riviera and Algiers io their' native watering-places in the winter, but it has been somewhat less obvious why they should spend their summer and autumn at many inconvenient, overcrowded, and not particularly salutary spas. The waters have been the ostensible excuse, hut even the most scientific analysis have frequently failed to demonstrate that there is any overwhelming virtue in some of the springs that have contained calcium chloride or sodium sulphate in the similar proportions to those that bubble out of the bowels of the earth in England. The explanation in many cases, of course, is j that roulette, baccarat, or petlts chevaux Lave been allowed as pas-1

times, and even the most gouty and hypochondriacal dyspeptic realises the difference in the degree of mental exhilaration derivable from those amusoments and that drawn from the drawingroom ‘music’ or tho wheezy orchestra of tho British hydro. On moral grounds we must commend the latter, but on medical ones it is not a little questionable whether some patients might not ho drawn out of themselves more by a course of ‘rougo-ot-noir’ and ‘pair’ and ‘impair.’ However, the first attempts to suppress gambling in tho pleasure resorts in Franco have been partly repulsed, and it may bo tho Government’}) courage will ooze out of its finger-tips when it comos to a fight. If, however, gambling is finally suppressed, hydro shares may rise.”