PHILOSOPHY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2807, 23 March 1882, Page 3

PHILOSOPHY.

Lahonohere, the witty London editor of “ Truth,” declares those who have at last got reconciled to enjoying most poisons freely—tobacco, beer, wine, spirits, coffee —need not have scruples lest they should injure their health, or shorten their lives, or set a bad example; for a close attention to medical opinion will, if they entertain such notions, entirely reassure them. “I notice,” says he, that poisons, like fashionable health-resorts, come up and go out just as the medical imagination or the popular craze may happen to jump. One year we are told how a drop of tobacco juice kills a oat; the next year beer brings rheumatism, wine is responsible for gout, spirits for insanity, and coffee for bile. Tea was my last stronghold. Sir Henry Thompson had informed the world that afternoon tea would not be so bad if it were not for the cream taken with it.. So !■ left off cream and was comparatively happy with milk; when, to my horror, I learned from another distinguished medical authority that tea would be even wholesome and nourishing if people always took cream in it, but that milk in tea sets up a peculiarly acid fermentation within, and most inimical to digestion, This last shock was tremendous; but, upon recovering from it, I determined to eat, drink, smoke, and be merry, whatever doctors might .write about my food and my liquor. Since I have acted on this resolution my health has been excellent.