NATIONAL HEALTH.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5082, 31 January 1927, Page 2

NATIONAL HEALTH.

NEED FOR IMPROVEMENT.

PRESENT-DAY FOOD CONDEMNED.

"The Great War has one wonderful effect. It altered the face of two pro-; fessicns,” declared Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, in an address on “The New Health Society” at the fortnigntly luncheon of the National Liberal Club (reports the Daily Telegraph). “People have become, alive to the realities of life,’’ he went on, “and are longer prepared to accept old ideas and dogmas, and this has changed the Church and the. medical People have begun to think, and are disturbed to find different views being held by members, of the profession. The vast majority of the disabilities and diseases from which .we suffer are due sjmply to ignorance, and it is a sad thing toi feel that the poor unfortunate savage" whom we pretend to pity and on whom we inflict our creeds lives a. more healthy life than we do. The native never gets cancer—the vilest of all complaints, which is de-, cimating our people and increasing as we, modify our food. What we ought to do is put people back on the land, where they ought to be.”

It was strange, said the speaker, that while medical men were supposed to teach people what they should eat there was nobody to teach them what to teach. Doctors generally told people to eat what they (the doctors) liked best. (Laughter.) Within a very short while they hopqd that some man of ample means would be able te ( put forward the money for a Chair of Dietetics in the University of London.

Holding up a roll which had been beside his plate, Sir William, amid laughter, said : “The, curse of oui’ age is that we are provided with white bread. I did not eat mine. You can’t feed rats and mice on white bread, and yet you give it to yciur guest. I noticed that our distinguished chairman only drank water for his lunch. I am not at all sure that a little, alcohol is not good for you. I think, in this vile climate of curs, we want something to take, the poor people out of their misery a little, if nothing else. If you got them back to the land they would be happy and wouldn’t need to rftsort ta artificial stimulants.”