Health Notes.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 10, 1 July 1884, Page 3

Health Notes.

We are indebted to Mr. J. Laurie Gentles, of Derby, for some particulars with regard to the diet of the pedestrian, Weston. While in Derby, his first breakfast consisted of oatmeal-porridge and milk, and his second breakfast of bread and coffee, with fish or eggs ; for dinner he had roast mutton, green vegetables, and farinaceous puddings; his "drinks" were tea, coffee, or ginger ale. Weston, we are informed, afforded every facility for the recording of facts connected with his personal health, which appears to be excellent; the temperature of the body, so delicate an index of the general condition, was apparently not the least affected by his exertions.—' British Medical Journal.'

The proper time to rise is when sleep, properly so-called, ends. Dozing is not admissible from any reasonable or health point of view. The brain falls into the state we call sleep, and the other organs of the body follow it. True sleep is the aggregate of sleeps. In other words, sleep, which must be a natural function — i.e., physiological instead of pathological, or induced by disease or drugs—is a state which consists in the sleeping or rest of all the several parts of the organism. Sometimes one and at other times another part of the body as a whole may be the least fatigued and so the first to awake, or the most exhausted, and therefore the most difficult to arouse. The secret of good sleep is the physiological conditions of rest being established—to so work and weary the several parts of the organism as to give them a proportionally equal need of rest at the same moment. The cerebrum or mind-organ, the sense organs, the muscular system, and the viscera should be all ready to sleep together, and, so far as may be possible, they should be equally tired. To wake early and feel ready to rise, this fair and equal start of the sleeper should be secured; and the wise self-manager should .not allow a drowsy feeling of the consciousness or weary senses, or an exhausted muscular system, to beguile him into the folly of going to sleep again when once his consciousness has been aroused. After a very

few days of self-discipline the man who resolves not to " dose"—that is, to allow some still sleepy part of his body to keep him in bed after his brain has once awakened—will find himself, without knowing how, an " early riser."—' Lancet.'

The results of some interesting analyses published by Dr. Wallace, of Glasgow, show in a marked manner the superiority for food purposes of coarse bread over that made of fine flour. In bran, which is the coarsest form of ground wheat, there is actually ten times more mineral matter than in the finest kind of flour. More than half of this mineral matter is phosphoric acid, which plays an important part in the formation of bone, and performs other functions in the human system ; so that, at the lowest estimate, bran is many times more wholesome and useful as an article of diet than white flour, which is also much more expensive. It is to be regretted that the present tendency among the working classes is to abandon coarse bread and oatmeal porridge for the prettier dough made of fine flour. It would be well for all of us if we would consult both our pockets and our stomachs, and go back to the honest fare of our forefathers.

It is admitted on all hands that the vegetable kingdom sustains the animal, and that carnivorous animals live on vegetables at second hand. The deer lives upon grass, and the tiger eats the deer. Beef and mutton are made out of grass and turnips. The question to determine is whether for man to live on grains, pulse, fruits, and what are called vegetables, or to get their substance at second hand through beef, mutton, and pig—fish, flesh, fowl. Vegetarians point to the striking fact that animals most nearly resembling man anatomically and physiologically, and to which he is supposed to be most nearly related, live on fruits and other vegetable substances. Anatomists and naturalists declare that man is frugivorous. Primitive man is supposed to have lived on fruits and nuts. When fire was invented, bread became the staff of life. Only the direst neccessity, such as sometimes causes cannibalism, could have induced men to eat and kill other animals. However the carnivorous tastes and habits of men have arisen, there is no doubt of a sufficiency of a vegetable diet. All experience proves it; our Indian Empire alone gives us abundant examples of men living through countless generations upon a purely vegetable diet. The question is not therefore what is sufficient, but what is best. If it were a question of economy, that would be easily settled. There is no doubt that any given territory will sustain from six to ten men on fruits, grains and vegetables, to one on flesh. The oatmeal which converted into pig will feed one man will give a more sustaining and purer diet, in its original condition, to fourteen. Dense populations must of necessity live mainly on the unchanged products of the vegetable kingdom. In tropical countries it has been found by experiment that an acre of land planted with the banana would feed twenty-five—Humboldt says thirty—labourers. In England we think each mouth must have its acre.—Dr. T. L. Nicholls in the Science Monthly tor November.

A Washington paper states that Mr Moncure D. Conway is going back to Washington to live. If true, England loses one of its profoundest thinkers and most eloquent speakers.

M. Shapira, who offered the forged Book of Deutoronomy for sale in London for a million of money, committed suicide lately at Berlin. The million sterling might have prevented the catastrophe. What a calamity it is to be found out !

It is calculated that there are now resident in America little under a thousand Japanese, and of this number no single one has yet ever been convicted of any criminal offence in any American court. A small colony of about 35 live in New York. Both there and in the other American cities and towns in which they are to be found it is worthy of mention that they do not as a rule belong to the working classes. On the contrary it appears that many of them occupy good positions as merchants and officials, while the younger men become attached to various schools and colleges, where they prove themselves apt scholars.