TALKS ON HEALTH.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3702, 11 December 1912, Page 7

TALKS ON HEALTH.

(Specially Written for “The Gisborne Times” by Medico.)

“A CLEVER DOCTOR.”

In this life there are generally threo courses open to us. We cari do what is right and proper, and wo can do more than what is proper. In eating, sleeping, drinking, working, playing, the same three courses may be run. 1 have been secretly amused at some of my successes in treating indigestion. You will not'believe it, hut I have actually been called a clever doctor, because I have taken the trouble to find out the habits and mode of life of my patient. I have been complimented when all I have done is to limit the dietary of a patient who was eating too much. I am far too wise

to blurt out, “Eat less and you will bo well.” That might give offence. No; I make out a carefully typewritten diet-chart limiting the quantity of food to about half what the patientlias been used to.

“ALL DONE IN KINDNESS." Elderly people generally eat too much; as age advances we get fonder of the pleasures of the table and we take less exercise. And the letters I get from grateful livers and stomachs who have been relieved of a daily source of torment would bring tears to your eyes. Yes, and not only the patients hut their friends are pleased. Preserve me from a grumpy, liverish father of a family. The children sitround the table shivering with fright while he sits scowling at the head of the “festive board." And all becariso his liver is overloaded three times a day at food. Then..l come along with my diet-chart, and behold I the sun shines again. Father is so nice to mother that she thinks she has come to the wrong house. It does not seem liko home. And it is all done by kindness and a diet-chart.

THE DIET-CHART AGAIN. Well, then, there is the other courseopen to us; we can eat too little. And when I say eat, I really mean absorb — actually enrich our blood. There is food that is put into the stomach that is so badly masticated by the teeth that it cannot be digested and absorbed. True, it is eaten, but it never reaches the blood. In my time I have had some great successes in treating young ladies. I often find they do not eat enough; they work hard, use up a lot of energy—they may bo on their feet nearly all day—and yet they are content to take about as much food as would keep a canary. Again I enter on my campaign with a dietchart. They must drink two pints of milk a day, they must eat a spongecake or some oatmeal biscuits between breakfast and lunch; they must take cocoa instead of . tea : salads dressed with oil; butter and cream.