SHOULD MAKE PREVENTION A SKY SIGN

Shannon News, 7 May 1926, Page 2

SHOULD MAKE PREVENTION A SKY SIGN

rEOi'IJi iiCR KISRS FROM DEAD FOODS. (uy Dr. H. T. Thuckcr.) Our sky sign to-day should be prevention and education, not diagnosis and treatment. \\ordsv. u'lji saith:—“To the solid ground of Nature, Trusts the mind which builds for age.’’ The . n.u aing of prevention in medicine to-day does not nearly ocm.py the spate in the medical curriculum it should. In a student’s live hard years of toil and instruction, 1 1 ieit not sufficient bias towards prevention; the whole training' is directed essentially to diagnosis treatment. We need prevention against' so-called health and laid health to secure general good health: “There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health.” (Carlyle). A movement has been started in Vienna to provide people who are hard of hearing with special armbands to protect them from traffic accidents.

Natives of India will not eat canned tisli from the Western world, because good Hindus do not eat tood prepared by anyone but the women of ‘their household or servants ol their own caste. They fear it may be polluted by contact with persons pelow their caste, or adulterated with ingredients forbidden by their religion. They evidently think no advantage in cash or saving can mane up l'or the folly of sacrificing good, health. Our general public"' is entirely without any practical protection against food fakers, dirty food handling and contamination. Preservatives are everywhere and in everything. They make foodstuffs keep, and formalin and formaldehyde wifi deodorise the most pungent, rotten flesh, fish or fow‘l. (Maori dried shark may ‘‘pong,’ but it is sunrayed and not poisoned with coal ta; preservatives. No preservative whatever shouh be used, as by using it we run unknown and, maybe, serious risks even when applied to food that is sound and satisfactory. Moreover, preservatives may mask and blinda.i] kinds of pollutions. Who knows whether preservatives may not pre pare the suitable' agent for the new-ly-found cancer organism. Preservatives are -irritants, and irritants are cancer producers. Cancer can never affect a healthy organ, and is fed by denatured preserved foods. Dead foods pred;.ce intestinal stagnation, i'his produces kinks, angulations, dilations, spasms ulcerations, and the ulcerations ha’, a a tendency to become cancer.

How like tjhis it; to our local conditions. The Avon and Heathcote have stasis and constipation, yet we Sit tight and regret to have them douched clear. Our Waimak. suffers from all the stress of kinks and angulations, and we sit pottering about her locality. Where do her floods come from —above the Gorge or beloW it? Where does her shingle come from, above the Gorge or below it? ‘

The Hawley Surgeon Schrieber prescribed a flood dam far above the- gorge, which would have h seven-mile' pond-lake above.it. This would have • spilled the flood; water out of the mountains, and would jjiave then caused the gravel and silt to deposit miles Above the dam; and the floods, acting- under the sedative caused by the dam and ..its spillways, v would have been easily amenable to treatment below the Gorge. But no! The local laity jurors would mess and scrap any old how, despising Nature and not assisting her by that wonderful pre venting operation —a dam —a waterpower, a fravitation high pressure water supply, to irrigate, to flush, water and garden with. The only way to stop getting fat and obese is to diet and stop eating so much. The only way to fix the old Waimak. is to harness her floods and still her gravel and silt by sedimentation and deposit. A general practitioner is one who looks lor the cause instead of blaming your teeth. Such men are Professor Speight and Mr Chrystall, Let us be thankful we have such men as these in our midst, j Let me conclude 1 by a quotation: 'TRUTHFUL DEATH CERTIFI- ( CATES. Som:; day we will tell the truth in the death certificates and the reports will be made out like this: “Died from thirty years of overeating.” “Smothered himself to death; worked and slept in unventilated rooms.” “Poisoned by his wife, who used wrong cooking methods," “Burned out; slept only six hours a nig-hf.” “Killed by high living.” Good health is a luxury that, all of us can enjoy if we are willing lo play the game on a long law of averages.—-" London lAfo 'Magazine."