HOW TO LIVE LONG.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 230, 3 October 1904, Page 2

HOW TO LIVE LONG.

A retired Army officer last month contributed to a London journal a 1 lengthy letter in condemnation of the I medical nkirmist. "In three days'j tiino I hope to celebrate my ninety-j second birthday," he wrote, "and in these times of disease ami tear of disease, the secret of my ■good health and long life may lie of some inter-' est to your readers. Briefly, then, t attribute my happy fate to the fact . that I have steadfastly turned a deal ear—my hearing is otherwise still of the best—to the teachings of modern medical science. I have absolutely ignored the flood of polysyllabically named diseases which modern doctors daily launch upon a helpless world." In his young days, he continues, it was considered the business of doctors to minister to the sick ; but now they interest themselves in scaring people to death. In every public place a man is confronted by advertisements dealing' with some dreadful ! disease, and thero is an ever-increas-ing number of "cheap weekly papers supposed to be devoted to the cause of health." The writer regards this new 'development in journalism as most disastrous. "There may be grounds for the existence of such papers! as the Lancet and the British Medical Journal," he says, "but 1 fail to see any' excuse for their technical medical papers trundling out week after week sensational statements which unsettle hundreds of nervous persons, and set all the cranks and faddists into new motion. I defy any man to read their lugubrious warnings and feel quiet in his mind afterwards. There is no journalism to-day more sensational, 'yellow' and harmful than some of the contents of the two medical periodicals named," This nonagenarian then proceeds to explain the manner in which he has defied every dogma of modern medical science. He has smoked all his life, and he has not 'developed heart disease or cancer of the tongue; he has drunk whatever ho pleased, and has neither Urigjat's disease nor gout. Patent leather boots have not driven him Wind, nor has linen un- ' 'derwear subjected him to pneumonia. He has eaten every one of the condemned foods, without counting the number of chews, and he means to got on eating them until his teeth fall him. Ho expects them to do so some day, because for some eighty ! years he has indulged in the habit ol crunching hard sweets, which doc . tors agree crack the enamel and hus- . ten decay. "Yes, in the end I know my follies will tind me out." He sa- . tirioally concludes, "already I can forsee my doom."

OJf THE FOURTH PACK. Literature. Negro Lynching. I Imperial Parliament. I Anecdotes of Women.