RICH CHILD DYSPEPTIC.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5490, 21 October 1929, Page 4

RICH CHILD DYSPEPTIC.

BEEF FOR BOYS. LIFE “ONE LONG HUSTLE.” “We find more dyspepsia in the well-to-do child, whose food is fairly well managed, but whose school life is one long hustle.” This statement was made by Dr. Chodak Gregory, a woman doctor of medicine, during a discussion at the British Medical Association Congress in Manchester.

“The schoolboy gets practically no leisure at all,” she continued. “I am not suggesting that every time a child gets a ‘tummy-ache’ he has to be sent to a psycho-analyst, but I think we should look at the treatment of dyspepsia from the psychologist’s point of view. We should try to use our influence to lessen the hustle of the modern child’s life.

The school in which schoolmasters recognise the value of leisure are exceedingly few.” Professor F. Lankmead said : “There are many Jack Sprats among chilren who eat no fat voluntarily. If made to do. so they suffer from dyspepsia.” Professor Vining, of Leeds, advocated a generous diet for children. “I doubt very much whether you can over-feed a child of school-age so long as you only give it three meals a day. The ordinary school child requires large quantities o f food.” It was, he said, inborn in the mind of well-to-do people that no child should be allowed to eat meat, and that it was the man of 40 who should eat beef steak, while the child should exist on such things as rice puddings, potatoes and gravy. “I would put it the other way,” said Professor Vining. “The man should have the small amount and the growing child a liberal amount of animal protein.” Dr. Dan McKenzie, of the Central London Throat and Ear Hospital, said there was a bewildering shower of remedies for the common cold in the head, but :—

“There is indeed no practical method of preventing this contagious disease, and there is no specific cure. The cold-water, open-air crank puts down all ills that flesh is heir to, and specially nasal catarrh, to living and working indoors. But this is the 20th century. Few of us can afford to revert to savagery.” The long and skinny daughters of the crank, he said, were sent out to face the nor’-easter “partly nude and purple.”