DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 100, 19 July 1927, Page 14

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

HEALTH AND LUXURY (Copyright, 1927. J \ GERMAN scientist who conducted autopsies on 30,000 mummies dating from 4,000 8.C.. to the dawn of the Christian Era, says he found abundant evidence that human ailments grow with luxury. Mummies of an earlier age showed signs of few of the diseases that appeared in those of a later, richer time. Gravel on the kidneys, tuberculosis, gout, cancer and smallpox came with the ages of luxury. Early Egyptians had hard, white teeth. Later ones, who by their costly burial robes showed they had lived in a time of greater wealth, had decayed molars. The whole trend, according to this scientist, has always been to an increase in human ailments when there was an increase in luxury. However, the point is that it was not the luxury that brought on the ailments, but a failure of the people to meet the changing conditions. A change in outward circumstances has to be met with a change in bodily habits. Extinct animals are the ones who could not meet the changes u climate and food, who kept on as they had been going under other circumstances and paid the penalty. There is no reason why Grandpa, who got callouses sitting on a hard board waggon-seat should be any healthier than little Eddie, who rides around on springs and shock absorbers. Luxury, in itself, is a fine thing if it is used rightly. The trouble with it is that too many people live in luxury as if they were living under the old conditions. They do not alter their habits to meet their new conditions. They eat the same food grandpa did when he chopped wood and milked the cows, and they exercise as grandpa did when he had a few minutes to rest. Consequently their aches and pains multiply and they blame it on luxury. The real villain in the piece is not luxury, but a continuation of habits that suited one condition into a sort of life that needs other habits. Scientists, experimenting with rats, have shown that a life lasts according to the “rate" it is used. Rats using their energy in spinning a wheel fast day after day. died sooner than those which used less energy from day to day. So men living in an age which enables them to conserve their energy should be healthy and long-lived if they change their mode of living to fit their new conditions. In fact the best assurance for long life is the ability to change with things about you, to adapt yourself to altering circumstances. The security for long life is not found in enormous strength or in so-called appliances for safety. The only thing safe for a man or a nation is to go on. Life is like riding a bicycle. Its safety consists in keeping straight ahead. Whenever anybody stops, all sorts of maladies begin to infest him. There have been mammoth animals dug up from the fossil beds of the past. They seemed to be admirably equipped for long life, but they have become extinct, while animals of less formidable construction with the ability to adapt themselves to changed circumstances still have their descendants with us. There is a tragedy in evolution. Things that will not continue to evolve must be removed.