——————————————————————————————————- Transcriber's Note: In preparing this ebook I have corrected a small number of obvious typographical errors, including the two which are mentioned in the September issue. I have not interrupted the text by marking each, but they are marked in the html version of this text. ——————————————————————————————————-



The

HEALTHY

LIFE

The Independent Health Magazine



VOLUME V JULY-DECEMBER 1913



LONDON GRAHAM HOUSE, TUDOR ST., E.C.



INDEX

VOLUME V.—JULY-DECEMBER 1913

Ballade of Skyfaring, A, S. Gertrude Ford, 490

Book Reviews, 532

Breathe, On Learning to, Dr J. Stenson Hooker, 630

Camping Out, C.R. Freeman, 438, 480

Care of Cupboards, Florence Daniel, 530

Castles in the Air, E.M. Cobham, 582

Cloud-capped Towers, E.M. Cobham, 626

Correspondence, 504, 533, 580, 658

Cottage Cheese, 658

Curtained Doorways, The, Edgar J. Saxon, 561

Doctor on Doctors, A, 637

Doctor's Reason for Opposing Vaccination, A, Dr J.W. Hodge, 597

Doctors and Health, 633

Fasting, A Significant Case, A. Rabagliati, M.D., 458, 492

Fear and Imagination, E.M. Cobham, 510

Food and the Source of Bodily Energy, 507

Fruit-Oils and Nuts, 659

Futurist Gardening, G.G. Desmond, 451

Health Queries, Dr H. Valentine Knaggs:— About Sugar, 540; Bad Case of Self-poisoning, 502; Boils, their Cause and Cure, 498; Canary versus Jamaica Bananas, 579; Can Malaria be Prevented? 466; Cereal Food in the Treatment of Neuritis, 619; Correct Blending of Foods, 655; Concerning Cottage Cheese, 617; Deafness, 615, 616; Diet for Obstinate Cough, 618; Diet for Ulcerated Throat, 575; Dilated Heart, 653; Difficulties in Changing to Non-Flesh Diet, 655; Dry Throat, 653; Eczema as a Sign of Returning Health, 613; Excessive Perspiration, 574; Farming and Sciatica, 575; Faulty Food Combinations, 536; Giddiness and Head Trouble, 468; Going to Extremes in the Unfired Diet, 543; Long Standing Gastric Trouble, 470; Malt Extract, 539; Neuritis, 538; Onion Juice as Hair Restorer, 651; Phosphorus and the Nerves, 577; Refined Paraffin as a Constipation Remedy, 652; Saccharine, 653; Stammering, 654; Severe Digestive Catarrh, 471; Sciatica, 651; Temporary "Bright's Disease" and How to Deal with it, 576; Ulceration of the Stomach, 541; Unfired Diet for a Child, 467; Water Grapes, 619; Why the Red Corpuscles are Deficient in Anaemia, 654

Health and Joy in Hand-weaving, Minnie Brown, 591

Health through Reading, Isabella Fyvie Mayo, 517

Healthy Brains, E.M. Cobham, 448, 474, 510, 546, 582

Healthy Homemaking, Florence Daniel, 495, 528

Healthy Life Abroad, D.M. Richardson, 559

Healthy Life Recipes, 462, 571, 610, 641

Hired Help, Florence Daniel, 495, 528

Holiday Aphorisms, Peter Piper, 508, 527

How Much Should We Eat? 442, 477, 513, 563, 593

Human Magnetism, 505

Imagination in Insurance, E.M. Cobham, 546

Imagination in Play, E.M. Cobham, 474

Imagination in Use, E.M. Cobham, 448

Indication, An, Editors, 437, 473, 509, 545, 581, 621

Learning to Breathe, On, Dr J. Stenson Hooker, 630

Letters of a Layman, I., 633

Lime Juice, Pure, 534

Longevity, A Remedy for, Edgar J. Saxon, 491

Mental Healing, A Scientific Basis for, J. Stenson Hooker, M.D., 456

Midsummer Madness, Edgar J. Saxon, 454

Modern Germ Mania: A Case in Point, Dr H.V. Knaggs, 638

More About Two Meals a Day, Wilfred Wellock, 487

New Race, The, S. Gertrude Ford, 601

Ode to the West Wind, Shelley, 555

Pickled Peppercorns, Peter Piper, 464, 570, 609, 660

Plain Words and Coloured Pictures, Edgar J. Saxon, 622

Play Spirit, The, D.M. Richardson, 602

Play Spirit, The: A Criticism, L.E. Hawks, 628

Quest for Beauty, The, Edgar J. Saxon, 523

Recipes, 462, 571, 610, 641

Remedy for Longevity, A, Edgar J. Saxon, 491

Remedy for Sleeplessness, 533

Salads and Salad Dressings, 462

Salt Cooked Vegetables, 506

Swan Song of September, The, S. Gertrude Ford, 523

Sea-sickness, Some Remedies, Hereward Carrington, 484

Semper Fidelis, "A.R.," 526

Sleeplessness, A Remedy, 533

Scientific Basis for Mental Healing, A, J. Stenson Hooker, M.D., 456

Scientific Basis of Vegetalism, The, Prof. H. Labbe, 549, 584

Significant Case, A, A. Rabagliati, M.D., 458, 492

Symposium on Unfired Food, A, D. Godman, 486, 648

Taste or Theory? Arnold Eiloart, B.Sc., 643

Travels in Two Colours, Edgar J. Saxon, 605

To-morrow's Flowers, G.G. Desmond, 451

Two Meals a Day, More About, Wilfred Wellock, 487

Vaccination, A Doctor's Reason for Opposing, Dr J.W. Hodge, 597

Vegetalism, The Scientific Basis of, Prof. H. Labbe, 549, 584

West Wind, Ode to, Shelley, 555

What makes a Holiday? C., 557

World's Wanderers, The, Shelley, 625



THE

HEALTHY

LIFE

The Independent Health Magazine.

3 AMEN CORNER LONDON E.C.

VOL. V JULY No. 24. 1913

There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one another.—CLAUDE BERNARD.



AN INDICATION.

Some laymen are very fond of deprecating the work of specialists, holding that specialisation tends to narrowness, to inability to see more than one side of a question.

It is, of course, true that the specialist tends to "go off at a tangent" on his particular subject, and even to treat with contempt or opposition the views of other specialists who differ from him. But all work that is worth doing is attended by its own peculiar dangers. It is here that the work of the non-specialist comes in. It is for him to compare the opposing views of the specialists, to reveal one in the light thrown by the other, to help into existence the new truth waiting to be born of the meeting of opposites.

Specialisation spells division of labour, and apart from division of labour certain great work can never be done. To do away with such division, supposing an impossibility to be possible, would simply mean reversion to the state of the primitive savage. But we have no call to attempt the abolition of even the minutest division of labour. What is necessary is to understand and guard against its dangers.

Specialisation may lead to madness, as electricity may lead to death. But no specialist need go far astray who, once in a while, will make an honest attempt to come to an understanding with the man whose views are diametrically opposed to his own. For thus he will retain elasticity of brain, and gain renewed energy for, and perhaps fresh light on, his own problems.—[EDS.]



CAMPING OUT.

IV. THE FIVE-FOOT SAUSAGE.

The question of blankets and mattresses may be taken as settled. We can now sleep quite comfortably, take our fresh air sleeping and waking, and find shelter when it rains. But that same fresh air brings appetite and we must see how that appetite is to be appeased.

Take a frying-pan. It should be of aluminium for lightness; though a good stout iron one will help you make good girdle-cakes, if you get it hot and drop the flour paste on it. You must find some other way of making girdle-cakes, and if you take an iron frying pan with you, don't say that I told you to.

Though it is obviously necessary that a frying-pan should have a handle, I was bound to tell Gertrude that I do not find it convenient to take handled saucepans when I go camping. I take for all boiling purposes, including the making of tea, what is called a camp-kettle. Most ironmongers of any standing seem to keep it, and those who have it not in stock can show you an illustration of it in their wholesale list. It is just like the pot in which painters carry their paint, except that it has an ordinary saucepan lid. You should have a "nest" of these—that is, three in diminishing sizes going one inside the other. The big lid then fits on the outer one and the two other lids have to be carried separately.



You hang these camp-kettles over the fire by their bucket handles, from the tripod or other means of getting over the fire. Sometimes the bough of a tree high out of the reach of the flames will do. Sometimes a stick or oar thrust into the bank or in a crevice of the wall behind the fire is more convenient than a tripod. Again, you can do without any hanging at all, making a little fireplace of bricks or stones and standing the saucepans "on the hob."

It is a simple thing to tie the tops of three sticks together and make a tripod. Then from the place where they join you dangle a piece of string, pass it through the handle of the kettle and tie it to itself, in a knot that can be adjusted up or down to raise or lower the kettle from the fire. This knot is our old friend the two half-hitches. Pass the loose end round the down cord, letting it come back under the up cord, then round again with the same finish, and lo! the up cord makes two half-hitches round the down cord. You can slip, them up and put them where you like and they will hold, but you have to undo them to take the kettle clean away from the fire. So we add to our equipment a few pot-hooks or pieces of steel wire shaped like an S. Their use will be obvious. If we have three of them it is quite easy to keep three kettles going over one fire. They swing cheek by jowl when they all want the same amount of fire, but each can be raised or lowered an inch or several inches to let them respectively boil, simmer or just keep warm.

These are the cooking utensils. A biscuit tin would make an oven and Gertrude says she must have an oven. For my part I would not attempt baking when camping out and I will say no more about ovens, except that all the biscuit tins in the world won't beat a hole in the ground first filled with blazing sticks and then with the things to be baked and covered with turves till they are done.

I had great difficulty in persuading Gertrude to feed out of tin dishes like those which we use sometimes for making shallow round cakes or setting the toffee in. They are ever so much better than plates, being deep enough for soup-plates and not easy to upset when you use them on your lap. Any number of the same size will go into one another and a dozen scarcely take up more room than one.

It was worse still when it came to a still more useful substitute, the camp equivalent of the teacup. In the first place we abolish the saucer, for the simple reason that we have no earthly use for it in camp. We take tin mugs with sloping sides and wire bucket handles. They fit into one another in the same accommodating way as the eating dishes. Gertrude was nearly put off this device altogether by Basil's remark that he had only seen them in use in poulterers' shops, where they are put under hares' noses....

"Basil, you, you monster," cried Gertrude, and I had to push those tin mugs as though I had been a traveller interested in the sale of them.

The drinking of hot tea out of these mugs is quite a beautiful art. You hold the wire handle between finger and thumb and put the little finger at the edge of the bottom rim. It is thus able to tilt the mug to the exact angle which is most convenient for drinking. When Gertrude had learnt the trick, she became perfectly enamoured of the mugs. She sometimes brings one out at ordinary afternoon tea and insists that the tea is ever so much better drunk thus than out of spode.

Smaller mugs of the same shape do for egg-cups, and the egg-spoons I take to camp are the bone ones, seldom asked for but easy to get in most oil-and-colour shops. Dessert spoons and forks and table knives are of the usual pattern, but the former can be had in aluminium and therefore much lighter than Britannia metal.

The camping-out valise is by all means the rucksack. Never the knapsack. I am almost ashamed to say this, because as far as my knowledge goes the knapsack is now obsolete. It may be, however, that it lingers here and there. If you see one, buy it for a museum if you like but not for use. The bundle should be allowed to fit itself to the back, as it does in a canvas bag. Suppose now that you fix the V point of a pair of braces somewhere near the top of the sack and bringing the webs over your shoulders, fix them, nicely adjusted, to the lower corners of the sack, it will ride quite comfortably upon your back—that is, you have made it from a plain sack into a rucksack or back-sack. Get or make as many good large strong ones as you have shoulders in the party to carry them. Have them made of a waterproof canvas, green or brown, to reeve up tight with strong cord passed through a series of eyelet-holes and, if you would be quite certain of keeping out the rain, with a little hood to cover the reeved bag end.

The great bulk of your luggage you will generally find it best to carry by wheeling it on a bicycle. Spread your ground-sheet on the floor. On that lay your blankets, doubled so as to make a smaller square, tent, mattress cover and bed suits on that, then your camping utensils and all other paraphernalia and roll the whole up into a sausage about five feet long, when the loose ends of the ground-sheet have been tucked over as in a brown-paper parcel. Tie it well with whipcord and fasten it to the top bar of your bicycle frame, leaving freedom of course for the handles and the front wheel to move and steer. Push the tent-poles through the lashings and start for your camp at a comfortable four or five miles an hour. You will find it easy to move camp at the rate of twenty miles a day and will see a great deal of country in the course of a fortnight.

The sausage on the bicycle shown in the illustration may be taken to contain all the gear and a little food. The rucksacks will take the rest and each man's most precious personal belongings. There is a small parcel tied to the handle-bar, scarcely to be seen because it is smaller than the end of the sausage. It is a complete tent tied up in its ground-sheet.

C.R. FREEMAN.



HOW MUCH SHOULD WE EAT: A WARNING.

This article, by one of the pioneers of modern dietetics, is in the nature of a challenge, and is certain to arouse discussion among all who have studied the food question closely.—[EDS.]

When men lived on their natural food, quantities settled themselves. When a healthy natural appetite had been sated the correct quantity of natural food had been taken.

To-day all this is upside down, there is no natural food and only too often no natural healthy appetite either. Thus the question of quantity is often asked and many go wrong over it. The all-sufficient answer to this question is: "Go back to the foods natural to the human animal and this, as well as a countless number of other problems, will settle themselves."

But supposing that this cannot be done, suppose, as is often the case, that the animal fed for years on unnatural food has become so pathological that it can no longer take or digest its natural food?

Those who take foods which are stimulants are very likely to overeat, and when they leave off their stimulants they are equally likely to underfeed themselves. Flesh foods are such stimulants, for it is possible to intoxicate those quite unaccustomed to them with a large ration of meat just as well as with a large ration of alcohol. The one leads to the other, meat leads to alcohol, alcohol to meat. Taking any stimulant eventually leads to a call for other stimulants.

How are we to tell when a given person is getting enough food, either natural or partly natural? Medically speaking, there is no difficulty; there are plenty of guides to the required knowledge, some of them of great delicacy and extreme accuracy. The trouble generally is that these guides are not made use of, as the cause of the disaster is not suspected. A physiologist is not consulted till too late, perhaps till the disorder in the machinery of life is beyond repair.

Diminishing energy and power, decreasing endurance, slowing circulation, lessening blood colour, falling temperature, altered blood pressure, enlarging heart and liver, are some of the most obvious signs with which the physician is brought into contact in such cases. But every one of these may, and very often does, pass unnoticed for quite a long time by those who have had no scientific training. The public are extremely ignorant on such matters because the natural sciences have been more neglected in this country in the last fifty years than anywhere else in Europe, and that is saying a good deal. Hence diet quacks and all those who trade on the ignorance and prejudices of the public are having a good time and often employ it in writing the most appalling rubbish in reference to the important subject of nutrition.

Being themselves ignorant and without having studied physiology, even in its rudiments, they do not appear to consider that they should at least abstain from teaching others till they have got something certain for themselves.

If the public were less ignorant they would soon see through their pretensions; but, as it is, things go from bad to worse, and it is not too much to say that hundreds of lives have been lost down this sordid by-path of human avarice.

On one single day a few weeks ago the writer heard of three men, two of whom had been so seriously ill that their lives were in danger, and one of whom had died. The certified cause of death in this case might not have led the uninitiated to suspect chronic starvation, but those who were behind the scenes knew that this was its real cause. A further extraordinary fact was that two out of these three men were members of the medical profession, whose training in physiology ought, one would have thought, to have saved them from such errors.

The conclusion seems to be that they did not use their knowledge because at first they had no suspicion of the real cause of their illness. In other words, chronic starvation is insidious and, if no accurate scientific measurements are made, its results, being attributed to other causes, are often allowed to become serious before they are properly treated.

These three men went wrong by following a layman quite destitute of physiological training, who APPEARED to have produced some wonderful results in himself and others on extraordinarily small quantities of food.

If the above tests had been made at once by a trained hand the error involved in such results could not have escaped detection, and none of these men would have endangered their lives. I myself examined the layman in question and finding him not up to standard refused to follow him. The writer has no difficulty in recalling at least a dozen cases similar to those above mentioned which have been under his care in the last twelve months, and the three above mentioned were none of them under his care at the time of their danger.

What, then, must be our conclusions in reference to these and similar facts of which it is only possible to give a mere outline here? I suggest that they are:—

1. Food quantities are of extreme importance.

2. These quantities were settled by physiologists many years ago, and no good reasons have since been adduced for altering them.

3. The required quantity is approximately nine or ten grains of proteid per day for each pound of bone and muscle in the body weight.

4. Any considerable departure from this quantity continued over months and years leads to disaster.

5. The nature of this disaster may appear to be very various and its real cause is thus frequently overlooked.

I will say a few words about each of these except the first, which is already obvious. The layman above mentioned asserted that he could live on but little more than half this quantity, but the food quantity really required is that which will keep up normal strength, normal circulation, normal colour, normal temperature and normal mental power. As we have got perfectly definite standards of all these normal conditions, serious danger can only be run into by neglecting to measure them.

It is also possible to tell fairly accurately the quantity of food a man is taking in a day, and then, by collecting and estimating his excreta, the quantity also out of this food which he is utilising completely and burning up in his body.

You would say that no danger should be possible with all these safeguards, and yet the above case history shows that of two trained physiologists, members of the medical profession, one died at least twenty years before his time, and the other was in great danger and only recovered slowly and with difficulty. Another similar case came to the writer suffering from increasing debility and what appeared to be some form of dyspepsia. He was quite unable to pass any of the above-named tests as to physiological standards, and an investigation of his excreta showed that his food was at least one-fifth or one-sixth below its proper quantity and had probably been so for many months past. Some of his doctors had been giving his "disease" a more or less long list of names and yet had not noted the one essential fact of chronic defective nutrition and its cause—underfeeding. Naturally their treatment was of no avail, but when he had been sent to a nursing home and had put back the 20 lbs. of weight he had lost he came slowly back to more normal standards and is now out of danger. In this case there was marked loss of weight, and few people, one would think, would overlook such a sign of under nutrition. But loss of weight is not always present in these cases, at least not at first. Some people tend to grow stout on deficient proteid, and then the fact that some of the essential tissues of the body (the muscles, the heart and the blood) are being dangerously impoverished is very likely to be overlooked. In the case last mentioned the loss of weight was put down to the dyspepsia, whereas the real fact was that the "dyspepsia" and loss of weight were both results of a chronic deficiency in food.

It is evident that some care about food quantities must be taken by all those who do not live on natural foods. For physiologists there is no difficulty in settling the question of quantity in accordance with the signs of the physiology of a normal body. That all, even physiologists, may run into danger if, while living on unnatural or partly unnatural foods, or while making any change of food, they do not consider the question of quantity with sufficient care.

That the question of nutrition should be considered in relation to every illness even though it may appear on the surface to have no direct connection with foods or quantities. As a matter of fact, the nature of the food and its quantity controls all the phenomena of life. Some twenty years ago most people lived fairly close to the old physiological quantities, now they have been cut adrift from these and completely unsettled and are floundering out of their depth. A most unsatisfactory, even dangerous, condition of affairs.

For the public it will now probably suffice if they insist on raising the question of quantity whenever they suffer in any way. If they are unable to answer the question themselves let them go to a trained physiologist who can do so, and not to a diet quack. But muscular strength, endurance, mental and bodily energy, skin circulation, temperature and blood colour are all things which the public can see for themselves and from which they should in all cases be able to get sufficient warning to save them from the worst forms of disaster.

Some people imagine that they eat very little, when as a matter of fact they have good healthy appetites. Others again think they are eating a great deal, when as a matter of fact they take very little. In both cases a physiological test of the excreta will give accurate information. I once had a medical patient who imagined that he produced great amounts of force and performed feats of endurance on wonderfully small quantities of food. His excreta showed, however, that he was merely under-estimating the food he took. A fat man may seem to be living on very little, but fat does not require to be fed, and his real bone and muscle weight is not large. A thin man may seem to require a large quantity of food, but he is really very heavy in bone and muscle, the tissues that have to be nourished. In all these ways appearances are apt to be deceptive for those who are ignorant of science and who do not go down to the root of the matter.

It is not necessary to follow the given quantity of grains per pound slavishly and without regard to consequences. It is necessary to see that the required physiological results are obtained.

If a patient says he can live on less than I ordered for him and if he can pass the physiological tests satisfactorily I know that his bone and muscle weight has been over-estimated. On the other hand, if a patient falls below the physiological tests, though taking and digesting the quantities ordered for him, I conclude that his bone and muscle weight has been under-estimated.

In all cases it is possible to obtain the best physiological results and to say when quantities are just right, neither too much nor too little.

The evil effects of too much are not serious; they entail perhaps a little "gout" or some temporary loss of freedom from waste products.

The evil effects of too little, if persevered in and continued, especially if some of these effects are attributed to causes which have no real existence, are deadly and dangerous, for they bring on an insidious deterioration both of function and structure which leads by several avenues, often miscalled "diseases," to death itself.

M.D.



HEALTHY BRAINS.

Comparatively few health enthusiasts or food reformers realise the necessity for mental, as distinct from bodily, hygiene, yet all real health has its roots in the mind. Moreover, it is only by studying the hygiene of mind that we are enabled to do work in greater quantity and of better quality than we should otherwise be capable of, and to do this without risk of strain on the nerves or injury to health. The articles under this heading put forward some of the elementary laws of mental hygiene.—[EDS.]

IMAGINATION IN USE.

To some people any talk about the importance of training the imagination of children through their toys, games and studies seems fantastic and trivial. They compare it to feeding them on sweetmeats; they think it means substituting story books for real life and encouraging the easy exercise of fancy for the careful study of fact.

But imagination is not a mere ornament to a life-work; it is rather one of its most valuable and necessary tools. If it did no more than sweeten and adorn the world, it would be well worth having, well worth making considerable sacrifices to attain. But it does more than this. It bears much fruit as well as flowers; fruit that, if it ripens in suitable weather, endures and can be used for the service of man.

There is a wonderful palm-tree, called the Tal or Palmyra palm, which in India and Ceylon supports six or seven millions of people, and "works" also in West Africa, where it is probably native. It gives its young shoots and unripe seeds as food; its trunk makes a whole boat, or a drum or a walking-stick, according to size; hats, mats, thread and baskets—in fact, almost all kinds of clothing and utensils—are made from the split and plaited leaves; gum comes from it, and certain medicines, jaggery sugar too and an intoxicating drink for those who desire it. In one of the museums at Kew—a wet day brings always something besides disappointment—there is a book made up of the very leaves of the palm, containing a Tamil poem enumerating more than eight hundred human uses to which this marvellous single plant can be put.

Now the imagination is like a Palmyra palm. We stand a long way off and, looking up, say "What a graceful tree! But what a pity it produces that intoxicating 'toddy' and nothing else!" Yet all the while food and clothing and shelter and travel and learning are all wrapped up in it, if only we were not too ignorant to guess, or too idle to seek.

We talk as if the poet and painter had need of imagination, but not the student, the doctor, the philanthropist, the business man, whereas none of these can do work at a really human standard without imagination that is living, penetrating, active and yet trained and disciplined.

A recent illuminating address to a body of students pointed out that Germany's immense industrial strides have been made possible by an education which draws men's minds out of narrow old grooves, and helps them to see and grasp wider possibilities. But the same speaker went on to point out that the English worker has far more real initiative and imagination than the German, and that in our own country we have not even to make elaborate plans for developing these qualities, but rather to release them in our administrators so far as to prevent actually checking them in the children now growing up.

Imagination in business, for instance, means new possibilities, fresh sources of supply and fresh markets to demand, economy of working and better adjustment of work to worker, so as to have less waste of our greatest capital, human time and power. America has taught us something in these respects; what we must do is to take what new light she has developed, while keeping our long-grown, well-earned skill which she has not had the chance to make.

In research work, again, we need perpetually the synthetic and constructive imagination if individual work is not to become narrowly specialised and shut off from other divergent or parallel lines which would illuminate it. The other day I was told of a great surgeon who not only has six or seven assistants to help him in his immediate tasks, but also, since he is too busy in the service of humanity to have time for reading, has eight trained assistants whose business it is to read in many languages what is being done all over the civilised world in his own line, and keep him informed as to the development of experience. A wonderful advance on the crystallisation of individual method, this, and yet it needed but the imaginative projection upon scientific work of what every business firm and every political unit has long done.

To transfer to our own concerns a method developed elsewhere is one of the most valuable services imagination can render. Almost all educational reform comes about thus, most mechanical inventions, a great part of economy and comfort in individual homes. Also, besides these particular advantages, the incessant coming and going between the different fields of activity, the circulation of attention which this use of the imagination involves, tends to vitalise and enrich not only the individuals who carry it out, but the whole social organism of which they form part.

Upon the moral side not much need be said. "Put yourself in his place" is a very old and respectable recipe for growing justice in one's conduct, consideration in one's speech, sympathy in one's heart. As employer or magistrate, as teacher or nurse, as customer or shopman, as parent or husband or child we must all deal somehow with our fellow-men: honestly and truthfully, we mean, kindly and helpfully, we hope. But is it not the more or the less of our imagination that makes such dealings possible? Without it, we are cruel because of something we do not feel, unjust because there is something we do not know, unwittingly deceitful because there is something we do not understand. With it, our justice will support, our kindness uplift, our attempt at help will not be barren, but will awake response and raise the whole level of our human intercourse into a region of higher possibilities.

E.M. COBHAM.



FUTURIST GARDENING.

TO-MORROW'S FLOWERS.

These three months of July, August and September are the second seed-time. I think they must be the most proper sowing-time, for is it not clear that Nature sows seed, not in spring, but in autumn? At any rate, now we can do more towards making a perpetually beautiful flower garden than in any other season. The biennials, those that blossom in their second year of life and those jolly perennials that come up year after year and always stronger than before, without any trouble on our part, are best started in life not too long before the winter. Spring-sown seed sometimes forgets that it is biennial and blossoms rather futilely the same summer, and at other times it grows so lush and large by winter that it cannot stand the frost.

Now we see the flowers in blossom in the vineyards of our friend Naboth and we know which we should most like in our own garden. There is an exquisite joy in begging or stealing a few seeds and bringing them home to blossom for us as they did for Naboth. I carry at this time a few small envelopes bought for a few pence a hundred at Straker's, and whenever I see something nice in seed I bag it. In another week it would drop beneath the plant it grew on and, not being cared for by a gardener, would be smothered or hoed up. In a nice little seed-bed all to itself it can unfold all manner of pleasure for its abductor.

Plant your flower seeds on a nice ripe, rich bed—that is, one compounded of old and even half-used manure. Keep the seedlings watered as they grow and by judicious pricking-out give them the room they need. About October you can plant the best of them in the place where you want a good bush next year, and, if it is a perennial, you have for many years to come a beautiful plant with a personal history. Even if you have bought your penn'orth of seed there may be a pleasant anecdote connected with it. My garden is at present amazingly blue with Dropmore Alkanet (Anchusa). Three years ago I bought three seeds for a penny. Two of them came up. I slashed up the plants and now I have half-a-dozen clumps as well as a similar number left in the old garden whence I have removed.

If you asked me what kinds of seed in particular you ought to plant for perennial flowers just now, I might want many more pages to tell you in. Let me give you a very short list of those that most appeal to me on the spur of the moment. It will be enough to go on with:—

Trollius (globe flower). Helianthemum (rock rose). Epilobium (willow herb).

Hollyhock. Echinops (globe thistle). Anchusa Italica, Dropmore variety.

Lupine. Tritoma (red-hot poker). Heuchera (coral-root). Yarrow.

Lychnis (garden campion). Inula (Elecampane). Funkia (Plaintain lily). Eremurus.

This list is representative because it includes some species, such as Eremurus, Trollius and Tritoma, that are not usually grown from seed by the amateur. To raise these rather expensive monsters from pennyworths of seed is a floral adventure which brings its own abundant reward.

I should be very proud of a garden that consisted entirely of plants that I had raised from seed. It might be one that had never had anything else in or the seedlings might gradually oust the bulbs and corms and grown plants with which the garden began. There would be many things there intrinsically as well as extrinsically valuable. Carnation seed, for example, is constantly producing new varieties, and to grow rose seedlings is even to court fortune. It is a long time before you see your rose. The seed takes sometimes two years to germinate, and then you have to wait a year or two before you get a typical blossom. The growers hurry matters by cutting a very tiny bud from the first sprout and splicing that on to an older stock. One of the advantages of having your roses grown from seed and on their own stocks would be that they could not produce wild suckers.

I have just seen a wonderful grove of Aquilegias, the glorified columbine which has the centre of one colour and the outside petals of another—sulphur with mauve or yellow with pink, and many other varieties. The nucleus was grown from shop seed and the rest from the seed of the first-comers. The only thing to choose between them is that the new ones have produced a least one variety not represented in the first batch. You may be sure that I am going to get some seed from here and raise some Aquilegias for myself. Good reader, go thou and do likewise.

G.G. DESMOND.



MIDSUMMER MADNESS.

We had come, "3.7" and I, to the Boundary, a white, unpaved road which winds across the full width of Wimbledon Common, from the old Roman camp to the windmill. Simultaneously we cried a halt, I because I never cross that road without some hesitation, he because he wanted to get out of the folding go-cart in which he had been riding and turn it, with the aid of a small piece of string and a big piece of imagination, into a 40-horse-power motor car.

On the map the road is not called the Boundary. If you want to know why I call it so I can only say that once you have crossed it things are different; I do not mean a difference merely of country or scenery, but a difference of atmosphere; better, and more literally, a change of spirit. To put it bluntly, I never knew the reality of fairyland until I blundered across that road one grey gusty evening ten years ago, and heard the tall grasses whistling in the wind. Since then the road has always been a frontier, not to be crossed without preparation.

As "3.7" tumbled out of his go-cart I looked at my watch and saw it lacked but a few minutes to noon. It was just such a cloudless June day as must have inspired Shelley's Hymn of Apollo. No smallest cloud to break the dazzling blue; and, high above our heads, Apollo, standing "at noon upon the peak of heaven."

If it had been Midsummer Day I should have thought twice about crossing the Boundary. As it was, we were quite near enough to the 24th of June to make it risky. So, as "3.7" bent a tangled head over the bonnet of his Daimler, I flung myself down on the level turf beside him and stared across the road.

Behind us and on either side were clumps of gorse bushes, and beyond them the immense level expanse of the open heath. Immediately in front was the road, sunk a foot beneath the turf, which comes right up to it, both on this side and that.

"Another piece of string, please," said "3.7," rummaging in my pockets without waiting for an answer, "and a pencil, and——"

And then I saw it. On the farther side of the road there is a stretch of short turf, some hundred yards wide; and beyond that an irregular line of silver birches; and beyond that the blue of distant hills, for the Common slopes down where the trees begin. Between the silvery wood and the road, through the midst of the wide belt of turf, and parallel with the Boundary, ran a river. There was nothing to be much surprised at, for it was just the kind of river you would expect to see running through the fields of fairyland. It was a river of grass.

It was the slender-stalked, tufted, not very tall, grey-headed grass that grows quite generally in open country and wild places. But the wind and the sun now turned it into a river which ran fast between its banks of green, its waves silvery grey, quick-flowing waves, gleaming and dappled, an endless succession. It flowed from somewhere out of sight in the west, and disappeared to the east over the edge of the great slope that brings you down to the woods, vanishing, to all intents and purposes, over the edge of the world.

Without taking my eyes off this astonishing spectacle I stretched out a hand and, catching "3.7" by the edge of his white smock, told him to run across the road to the grass and—paddle in it. I said it was better than motor cars. He made no comment on this but, after glancing warily up and down the road (for he has been brought up in wholesome awe of the entire tribe of automobiles), he crossed the Boundary, ran across the turf and plunged up to his knees in the river.

I cannot be certain, but it is my considered opinion that Apollo stopped his golden chariot for the space of a whole minute to look down at the golden-haired boy wading in that noiseless, fast-flowing river.

In another minute "3.7" was back at my side, both hands full of the tufted grass he had pulled. I regret to say he tickled my ear with it.

* * * * *

Honest, solemn reader, ardent food reformer, keen educationist, clear-headed moralist, practical-minded housewife, I tell you frankly there is no moral to this little episode. It throws no light on what to eat, or on the purchasing power of an English shilling, or on the ethical training of young children, or on the nature of neurasthenia. Fairyland, of course, is a childish fiction, Apollo a solar myth, a road is a road, grass is grass and heaven is a state of mind. I quite agree with you. But let me whisper something in your ear. If you should ever blunder across your Boundary, don't be surprised if things look queer on the other side; above all, whatever you do, don't let any strange river you may find flowing there carry you away, or it may bring you, spite of all your protests, through one of the gates of pearl into the City of God.

EDGAR J. SAXON.



A SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR MENTAL HEALING.

There is a vast amount of loose talk, and innumerable assertions from irresponsible individuals concerning the wonders that have been achieved by Mental Healing, but naturally the scientist and physician, when dealing with such a question as this, has to put aside, not all enthusiasm, but certainly all emotionalism, and then, most carefully sift the evidence laid before him. The scientist here wants hard, dry, irrefutable facts; the responsible physician requires to know—by his own careful diagnosis or by an array of tabulated facts—the condition of the patient before and after treatment—that is, of the one who claims to have been cured by mental means. Innumerable claims are thus being made by patients and others, so that it is imperative for the unbiased physician at all events to consider the above question; this in order to give a reason for the faith that is in him, when he is known to be one of those who favour the metaphysical means of healing. Even the sciolist in the matter knows that in the case, say, of blushing, or blanching of the face, the action of mind over matter—of the body—is palpable; all admit that the quality of joy, for instance, will prove a splendid tonic; that despair, on the other hand, will pull down the bodily condition. But all this, we shall be told, is unconscious action; true, but fortunately we are now aware that by a forceful action of the will we can consciously direct or derivate, as the case may be, currents of nerve-force to any part of the body. Occultists have known this for many centuries. Joy, hope, faith: these are very potent factors in improving the health conditions—simply because they act upon the sympathetic nervous system, and this latter acts upon the circulation. Happiness dilates the blood-vessels. Fear contracts them. Thus, unbounded faith; renewed hope; sudden joy; enforced will-power; all have a marked effect upon bringing about an equilibriated condition of the circulation—just the same as a hot bath does, though not so rapidly or so perceptibly. Further, we must remember that all disease more or less is a stasis, a congestion, somewhere; we have only to dissipate this; to separate the cells; to expand the part, as it were, and "resolution," as we call it in congestion of the lungs, takes place. So that it seems to me that we can fairly claim a strictly scientific basis for Mental Healing. I have always, however, maintained that the attitude of the patient's own mind has much to do with the result: in his consciousness there must be faith and hope in order to get the best effect.

Judging, then, of the very remarkable and palpable changes which anyone can see occur on such superficial parts as the face and extremities, I can see no reason that, by an enforced mental action, the deeper parts—including any hidden diseased part—should not be altered for good. I am very confident that it is upon these lines, coupled, as they can always be, with advice as to clean feeding and right living generally, the physician of the future will largely depend for his cures. Thus we are fully justified in not only trying the system on "functional," but also for "organic," cases.

J. STENSON HOOKER, M.D.



A SIGNIFICANT CASE.

ACCOUNT OF A FAST, UNDERTAKEN FOR THE CURE OF A PROFOUND BLOOD DISEASE.

The following account of a fast is worthy of attention. It is rigidly accurate in principle, as far as I could make it so, and I am responsible for its truthfulness. But the subject of it, feeling that he is engaged in a duty and "labour of love," as he expresses it, is yet naturally anxious to prevent his identity from being discovered; and so, while the facts of the narrative are true in principle they have been varied in a few details for the purpose of preventing the recognition of the subject of them.

They occurred in the history of a man of about 40 years of age, who fell ill of an infectious disease some 20 years ago, while living abroad. The exact time of the infection is not known. The patient was treated by qualified doctors living in the same country as himself, and there is no reason to believe that he was not properly and skilfully treated. He had, however, for years buoyed himself up with the hope that he should be able to come to England for the best treatment, and recently he found himself in this country for that purpose. It goes without saying that the eminent men consulted treated him after the most modern and approved methods, which were also, so far as knowledge goes, the most likely to benefit him. Not only as to treatment must it be assumed that the best was done, but the diagnosis also is supported by the authority of the doctors seen, and was confirmed by physiological and pathological investigation. This would be recognised if it were possible to publish names, places and dates which are withheld from the courteous reader for the reason already given. I can only say that I entirely concur in the diagnosis and in the suitability of the treatment.

The man came under my care on a Sunday, the fast, which is the subject matter of this communication, having been commenced on the Friday six weeks before that day, the last food having been taken on the Thursday at 5 P.M. I saw him, therefore, on the forty-fifth day of the fast. His pulse was 59, soft, steady, regular. Temp. 96.8 degrees, about 11 A.M. He was able to be up, and walked actively, all his bodily movements being active and his mind quite clear and rational. His weight on the day after I first saw him was, in the same clothes as when weighed at the beginning of the fast, 129+1/2 lbs. He said he weighed 171 lbs. on the machine at the commencement, and therefore the loss of bodily weight up to that time was 41.5 lbs. The average loss of weight during the 46 days of the fast was about nine-tenths of a pound daily if the 41.5 lbs. loss is divided by the 46 days of the continuance of the fast up to that time—41.5/46=.9 lbs. almost exactly.

When he came to my consulting room on the forty-sixth day, about 2.15 P.M., the pulse was 64, temp. 95.6 degrees (thermometer 3 minutes under tongue). He was much troubled with a nasty expectoration of mucus. His breath was very offensive. No enlarged glands could be felt in either groin—perhaps a trifling enlargement in the right. In middle of front border of right tibia a little irregularity is felt, and a small hollow, which he thinks is filling up; but it might be that the exudation on the bone immediately above and below the hollow is somewhat reduced, as this would equally give the suggestion that the hollow is filling up. There is a similar but rather smaller irregularity on the left tibia also. He felt rather weak that day, which he attributed to not having had his usual walk the day before. The nasal cavity consists of a large grey septumless cavern showing dry crusts. The issuing breath is most offensive. Patient had drunk freely of water, he said, to the extent of 4 or 5 quarts a day during the fast but when I said—do you mean that you have been taking over a gallon of water daily?—he rather hesitated, and did not think it was so much as that. He had not measured it and had taken it cold usually, though occasionally hot, and had taken it without stint as he wanted it. On the forty-eighth day of the fast he complained of being weak but worst of all, he said, his breath was very offensive to himself. It was so to me also—faint, fetid, putrid. His sense of smell was greatly impaired, so much so that he could not smell the offensiveness of the bowel-excreta which came away every day on using the gravitation-enema, and which were horrible to by-standers. It would seem from this as if his distress at the bad smell of his breath was probably due to a perversion of the sense of smell, which can be easily understood if we reflect that the disease-process was going on in the region where the smell-apparatus is specially located. The temperature was 96.2 degrees that morning the patient said. At 2 P.M. when I saw him the pulse was 68, regular, even, steady. He says he was feverish last night. I suppose he felt hot. He sleeps well, but says he hears the clogs of the mill-hands as they go to their work in the mornings. Has lost 2 lbs. weight in last 2 days. Temp. 93.6 degrees to my observation 2.30 P.M. Says he feels "done at the stomach." His voice is poor. Expectorates somewhat freely. A small blob of green thickish mucus in ordinary white mucus came away in my presence. Urine acid 1010. No glucose. Faint trace of albumin to heat and picric acid: also to nitric acid. The right lachrymal punctum is blocked; the tears run down the cheek; and I failed to get even a hair-thick wire into it. Evening, pulse 65, temp. 97.2 degrees in bed with hot-water bottle. Faeces most offensive, no bowel-excreta coming away except to enema. Forty-ninth day. In bed, temp. 97.2 degrees, pulse 65, soft, steady, regular. No great emaciation of limbs. Showed me some green expectoration. He says it is from Salvarsan as it is exactly like what he was injected with! The motion to the enema as offensive as before, but the breath is less offensive to me: not so fetid.

On this day patient completed 7 weeks of fasting. Feels sick and as if he would vomit. About midday he did vomit about a teaspoonful of dark green stuff, very bitter and acid (bile, I should call it, though he calls it "pure citric acid") and immediately after that he got rid of a motion without the use of the enema, brown, dark and very offensive still. I think the breath, however, is rather less offensive; and so I thought also two days ago. Temp. 97, pulse 67, soft, steady, regular; about 1.30 P.M. In bed since fiftieth day of fast. Not feeling very ill and not specially emaciated, though the buttocks are thinning; but legs and thighs and arms and forearms not specially thin. He came to me to be weighed on the forty-ninth day and weighed 127+1/2 lbs. Fifty-second day of fast. Still in bed. Condition much the same as to pulse, temperature, etc., and as to emaciation so far as observation goes. Remained in bed, not because unable to be up, but because he thought it would be better for him to be resting. On the fifty-fourth day, as he still felt sick, I gave him, at his request, an emetic in the form of 10 grains of copper-sulphate. This was followed by sickness after about an hour, when he got rid of a very little of the same green stuff as before. Bile? But the difficulty is to understand how, after all this time of fasting, he should still feel sick and with inclination to vomit. On the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth days of the fast he remained in bed, the condition being much the same. On Thursday, the fifty-sixth day, he broke the fast at 5 P.M., just 8 weeks after beginning it. He had meant to go on for 60 days, and I did not think that there would have been any danger in his doing so; but I did not press him to continue any longer. He took 3 oranges on that day; and on the Friday he took 5 more. I advised him not to increase the quantity of food too quickly. The breath has been quite sweet during the last two days. He has been too weak to take enemata, so we cannot say if motions would still have been offensive. And as there is no weighing machine in his room, we don't know the exact loss of weight sustained during the fast, though there is no reason to think that it has averaged more than .9 lb. a day. Up to the time of stopping the enemata, pieces of mucous membrane and mucus itself came away from the bowel, and the motions were very offensive. He seems to have a mucous enteritis without fever.

On the fourth day after breaking the fast, patient took 6 oranges, 4 apples and a banana; and he ordered much more food, which, however, I advised him not to take. On this day his bowels were opened naturally, with a very offensive motion. But the breath was much sweeter, in fact not offensive at all.

On the sixth day he came to my consulting-room and weighed 128 lbs. Pulse 80, soft, steady, regular. He had not slept all night and had had to be up no fewer than 6 times to have his bowels opened. No diarrhoea, he said, but full motions, the first 3 very offensive. Breath not offensive. Has dry pharyngitis and is complaining of sore throat.

Next day. Weight 133 lbs. Bowels acted again, 1 A.M., 3 A.M., 6 A.M., 9 A.M. and 1 P.M. Large motions. I told him I thought he was taking too much food. Pulse 104. Not sleeping well. Complained of sore throat.

Eighth day. Weight 138 lbs., a gain of 5 lbs. a day for 2 days. Pulse 80 at 7 A.M. (his own statement), at 2.30 P.M. pulse 100, temp. 99.4 degrees. Bowels acted at 12 midnight, 3.30 A.M. and about 11 A.M. Went that day to have his photograph taken. The throat was better. Tongue dry and leathery. It was plain to me that he was taking too much food. He was having a mixed diet and taking much and often. He said his "mouth was coming to pieces," and in fact the mucous membrane was glazed and peeling; also the lips. On the ninth day he returned home.

The loss of weight can be seen from the following statement. On commencing the fast the weight was 171 lbs.

First day weight was 171 lbs. Sixth day " " 165+1/2 " Seventh day " " 163+1/2 " Twelfth day " " 158 " Fifteenth day " " 155+1/2 " Eighteenth day " " 150+1/2 " Twenty-fifth day " " 142+1/2 " Forty-seventh day " " 129+1/2 " Forty-ninth day " " 127+1/2 "

Fast ended on fifty-sixth day. On the sixth day after breaking the fast the weight was 128 lbs. On the next day it had risen to 133 lbs. and on the following day to 138 lbs. In the first 47 days of the fast the loss of weight was 43.5 lbs., or an average loss of .888 lbs. daily (43.5/49=.888 lbs.) The loss of weight for the last 8 days before the fast was broken is not known as patient was in bed, though it probably was at much the same rate as during the other times of the fast when the weight was taken on the scales.

The following comparative measurements are interesting. Of course he had been eating for a week after the termination of his fast, so that the measurements taken on that day would be higher probably than if they had been taken seven days before, when he broke the fast.

BODILY MEASUREMENTS.

At Commencement At Termination of Fast. of Fast.

Forearm 11 inches 9+5/8 inches Arm 11+1/2 " 8+3/4 " Hips 38 " 32+1/2 " Thigh 21+1/4 " 16 " Pelvis 37+1/2 " 30+1/2 " Calf[1] 15+1/4 " 13+1/2 " Neck 14+1/2 " 12+1/2 " Chest 38 " 31+1/4 to 34+1/2 "

[1] There was a bundle of varicose veins behind right calf.

Patient kept a diary during his fast, but it does not seem necessary to reproduce its statements here. It shows that he walked about during the time, notes the state of the weather as foggy or very foggy or freezing, mentions that water was taken, sometimes hot apparently, as on 15th March, "after glass of hot water, pulse 70, temperature 98+1/2 degrees." No doubt drinking the hot water had elevated temporarily the mouth-temperature, as it does. The diary also notes that he felt weak, had a bath, or did not have a bath, notes the pulse-rate, etc., as also the effects of the daily enemata. On the twenty-ninth day of the fast he took a bottle of Apenta Water. Such are samples of statements from the diary.

A. RABAGLIATI, M.A., M.D.

The remainder of this article deals with conclusions of great interest and value, and will appear in our next issue.—[EDS.]



HEALTHY LIFE RECIPES.

SALADS AND SALAD DRESSINGS.

For salads it is not necessary to depend entirely upon the usual salad vegetables such as lettuce, watercress, mustard and cress.

The very finely shredded hearts of raw brussel sprouts are excellent, and even the heart of a savoy cabbage. Then the finely chopped inside sticks of a tender head of celery are very good; also young spinach leaves, dandelion leaves, endive, sorrel and young nasturtium leaves.

Then there are the onion family (for those who can take them), the tender kinds, such as spring onion, chive and shallot being very good when chopped finely and used as a minor ingredient in any salad.

The root vegetables should also be added in their season, raw carrot, turnip, beet, artichoke and leek, all finely grated.

A taste for all the above-mentioned vegetables, eaten raw, is not acquired all at once. It is best to begin by making the salad of the ingredients usually preferred and mixing in a small quantity of one or two of the new ingredients.

For those who find salads very difficult to digest, it is best to begin with French or cabbage lettuce and skinned tomatoes only, or, as an alternative, a saucerful of watercress chopped very finely, as one chops parsley.

Any salad, however made up, should be served in as dainty and pleasing a fashion as possible. It is, perhaps, usually best to serve it ready chopped and shredded, and to allow each person at the table to take his or her own helping of "dressing."

English people seldom serve salad in the French fashion—that is, quite dry, save that the dressing is well mixed in an hour before the meal. Readers who have been to France may have seen French peasant women whirling a wire salad-basket round their heads in order to dry the materials after the cleansing has been done. When dry, the green-stuff is torn with the hands, the dressing (and the French know all about salad dressings) is added and the whole allowed to stand some little time, so that by the time the meal is served there is a complete blending of all flavours.

Not everyone likes this method; but it is certainly better than the customary method here, which too often leaves a little puddle of water at the bottom of the bowl.

There are many ways of preparing good salad dressing without resort to vinegar, salt and pepper. The two prime necessities are (1) really good oil and (2) some kind of fresh fruit juice. Most people prefer lemon juice or the juice of fresh West Indian limes, well mixed into either olive oil, nut oil or a blended oil such as the "Protoid Fruit Oil" or Mapleton's Salad Oil. The ordinary "salad oils" obtainable at grocers are seldom to be recommended; they almost invariably contain chemical preservatives and other adulterants. It is better to have the best oil and use it sparingly if need be, than take any faked product just because it is cheap.

With most people the addition of pure oil assists the digestion of the salad, as well as serving other purposes in the body.

Many excellent salad recipes and suggestions for novel yet simple "dressings" will be found in Unfired Food in Practice, by Stanley Gibbon.[2]

[2] 1s. net; 1s. 1+1/2d. post paid, from the office of The Healthy Life, 3 Amen Corner, London, E.C.



PICKLED PEPPERCORNS.

This, which is a regular feature of THE HEALTHY LIFE, is not intended as a household guide or home-notes column, but rather as an inconsequent commentary on current thought.—[EDS.]

An interesting booklet by Raymond Blathwayt with samples of Bath Mustard will be sent free on application to J. & J. Colman, Ltd. (Dept. 49) Norwich.—Advt. in Punch.

Rumours are also afloat that G.K. Chesterton has written a brilliant booklet on Eiffel Tower Lemonade, and that the Attorney General has been commissioned to write a highly interesting brochure on American macaroni.

* * * * *

"I enclose you a photo of my baby, Willie, aged fifteen months. He was given up by two doctors, and then I consulted another, who advised me to try ——'s Food, which I did, and he is still having it. You can see what a fine healthy boy he is now, and his flesh is as hard as iron."—From an advt. in Lady's Companion.

Evidently a case of advanced arterio-sclerosis.

* * * * *

HEALTH BISCUITS. Nice and Tasty, handled by our 55 salesmen daily.—Advt. in Montreal Daily Star.

One reason, perhaps, why both the public and the sales have declined.

* * * * *

WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE FOR A PERFECT SKIN? Is 3d. too much? Many perfect skins to-day are traced to a single sample. —Advt. in Lady's Companion.

The price is reasonable; but I think I would rather see a sample first, wouldn't you?

* * * * *

OUR SPECIAL FILLING FAST—Headline in Daily News.

The correct antidote for the well-known "starvation of over-repletion."

* * * * *

Cold Anniversary Raised Pie and New Potato Salad.—From the Seventh Anniversary Menu of The Eustace Miles Restaurant.

I am told that one old gentleman, misled by the chef's quite innocent use of adjectives, protested to a waitress that the day was really very warm; also that a youthful wag obliterated the initial C from his menu with a pen-knife and then inquired which was the better vintage, '06 or '09.

* * * * *

But to contend that there is no difference between a good yellow man and a good white man is like saying that a vegetarian chop of minced peas is like a chop of the chump variety.—New Witness.

Chop-chop—as the good yellow man might be tempted to say if he came upon this specimen of white wisdom.

* * * * *

Canvassers can make a very good profit by selling a patent ladies' folding handbag, also wristlet watches.—Advt. in Daily Mail.

Nevertheless, the only place for a patent lady is a registry office.

* * * * *

CAKEOMA PUDDING? You cannot know how delicious they are until you have tasted them.—Advt. in Lady's Companion.

One of the things that would never have occurred to you if you hadn't seen it expressed so clearly.

* * * * *

SAXON.—How cruel of you. Although I have not the honour of cap and gown, I do possess a Classical Dictionary. If I can help further, write again. Regarding the recipe, it depends upon its nature. Perhaps VERA is the lady to whom you should address your question—Lady's Companion.

My colleague, Mr Edgar J. Saxon, denies all knowledge of this affair. But I do wish he would be a little more careful in future.

PETER PIPER.



HEALTH QUERIES.

Under this heading Dr Knaggs deals briefly month by month, and according as space permits, with questions of general interest.

Correspondents are earnestly requested to write on one side only of the paper, giving full name and address, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. When an answer is required by post a stamped addressed envelope must be enclosed.—[EDS.]

CAN MALARIA BE PREVENTED?

A. de L. (Lisbon) writes:—For five months I have been a strict "fruitarian," and as I am obliged now to go to Mozambique (Portuguese East Africa) to remain there five rears, I should be much obliged to you if you kindly let me know what I must do to prevent the African fever and biliousness which seem to afflict all Europeans in that part of the world. Any hints you could give me as to maintaining health in such a climate would be most gratefully acknowledged.

I do not think that it is possible for any European, whether he adopts fruitarian or ordinary diet, to entirely escape malaria, since it is caused by a minute parasite which is forced into the blood by a certain form of biting mosquito.

The parasite will, however, surely gain less hold on one whose blood is clean and pure and whose vital force is strong, than on one who dissipates his strength by partaking of meat, alcohol, tea, coffee and other stimulants, or who otherwise gets his blood into a bad state by faulty diet generally.

Therefore, the thing this correspondent should do is to live as much as possible upon the simple frugal fare of the natives. He can take raw coker-nut freely and eat the fresh fruits which grow in this part of Africa. If he can obtain pineapple or papaw he will find these excellent to help him to retain his health and strength in this country.

UNFIRED DIET FOR A CHILD: IS IT SUITABLE?

Mrs L.B.F. writes:—My husband and I are much interested in The Healthy Life, deriving much benefit and good advice from its pages. It is the only magazine, we find, which answers questions that we have long been puzzling over. Reading a work of the "Montessori Method" of training children last night I was disturbed to find I had, according to that book, been feeding my little boy, aged three years, all wrong. It says: "Raw vegetables should not be given to a child and not many cooked ones. Nuts, dates, figs and all dried fruits should be withheld. Soups made with bread, oil, bread and butter, milk, eggs, etc., are the principal foods Dr Montessori recommends. She also advocates the use of sugar."

Our boy has nuts, ground and whole, all the fresh fruits and dried ones, salads, brown bread and nut butter, sometimes dairy butter, no milk, his food mostly uncooked, as we ourselves believe in. If Dr Valentine Knaggs would give us his opinion on this I should be very grateful. The boy is healthy, but I notice a slight puffiness below the eyes of late in the morning. Also his temper does not improve as he gets older. Will he be having too much proteid (nuts) for one of his years, or is the temper natural as a result of bad discipline. His father is away all day, and mothers are, as a rule, soft marks, are they not?

It is difficult to answer fully a question of this sort, as so much depends on the child's temperament and environment. A frail, delicate child with the promise of high mental development requires a finer and softer grade of nutriment than one of a coarse animal nature with strong, well-developed digestive organs.

All healthy children, especially boys (as Mr Saxon will attest!), are full of mischief and restlessness, which it is the duty of a mother or a nurse to divert into right channels.[3] The display of temper is probably an indication of this not being done, though it may be due in part to the raw diet not suiting the child.

[3] This correspondent, and all mothers of difficult children, should study the works of Mary Everest Boole, published by C.W. Daniel, Ltd.; also The Children All Day Long, by E.M. Cobham.—[EDS.]

The advice I would give would be to alter the diet and make it lighter.

From my point of view, Dr Montessori has not given sufficient attention to the other side of the diet question, preferring to remain more on the side of orthodoxy. Moreover, her own work has been done in Italy, where a climate prevails which does not call for so free a use of vegetables and salads as is the case in our own cooler and bleaker clime.

I suggest, as a beginning, the following diet might be tried, but it is necessarily impossible to guarantee good results unless the cause of the puffy eyes and temper have been definitely located by personal examination:—

On rising.—A raw ripe apple, finely grated, or simply scraped out with a silver spoon.

Breakfast at 8.—A scrambled egg on a Granose biscuit with a little finely chopped salad or finely grated; raw roots appetisingly served with a dressing of oil, lemon juice and a little honey. This to be followed by an "Ixion" or "P.R." biscuit, with fresh butter.

Dinner at 2.—Home-made cottage cheese, or cream cheese, or a nut meat (served cold out of the tin, or, better still, home-made). Two casserole-cooked vegetables, done with a little fruit juice and lemon to retain colour. This to be followed by a baked apple with cream and a little home-made, unfired pudding made of dried fruits.

Supper at 5.—A slice of "Maltweat" bread, and butter, and a cupful of clear vegetable soup, or some hot water with some lemon juice added, and slightly sweetened with a little honey.

GIDDINESS AND HEAD TROUBLE.

Mrs L.B.F. also writes:—I sometimes think I must make dietetic mistakes. My husband thinks I am perfectly healthy, so I do not say anything of the giddiness in the morning and after eating, a drowsiness and slight pain at the back of the head and underneath one of my ears. Also under my eyes is on some mornings quite swollen and puffed up. It is not so marked, but I am quite conscious of it. Our diet consists mostly of a salad, with bread or baked potato and cheese or ground nuts or cooked brussels sprouts and a nut meat pie, apple pie and cream, with brown bread and butter, or a raw fruit meal, nuts, apples, grapes, figs, dates and no bread.

Two meals a day, first in the morning at eight o'clock, second at two or three in the afternoon. A glass of hot water with lemon at nine P.M., and the same in the morning. I do some exercises night and morning and am out in the fresh air often through the day. We live in the country and I have every chance of keeping myself healthy. Perhaps I should say I do not eat many nuts, finding them rather difficult to digest. Should I use an enema when I feel like this, or wait for natural results?

The symptoms of which L.B.F. complains are in all probability due to flatulence and to general disturbances of the digestive process.

Perhaps it would be a good plan to make the diet lighter. The nuts could be omitted and cheese or eggs substituted. An evening meal would be helpful.

As to the bowels, some senna and camomile tea at bedtime would help to clear them. Unless there is distinct evidence of faecal retention in the colon it is better not to use the enema as a regular thing.

On rising.—A tumblerful of Sanum Tonic Tea made with hot, preferably distilled, water.

Breakfast.—An all-fruit meal consisting of nothing but apples, bananas, grapes, or orange, or any fresh ripe fruit that is in season.

Dinner at 12.30.—A cooked meal consisting of two casserole-cooked vegetables, with grated cheese as a sauce dressing, with some twice-baked or well toasted bakers' bread, followed by a baked apple and cream. (Omit nut meat pie and apple pie.)

Tea meal at 5.—2 oz. of cottage cheese or cream cheese, wholemeal bread and butter, small plateful of finely grated raw roots with an appetising dressing containing some "Protoid Fruit-Oil."

Bedtime.—Tumblerful of hot water (preferably distilled) to which senna leaves and German camomile flowers (very little) have been steeped to infuse; or a cupful of dandelion coffee could be taken if the bowels are regularly acting.

LONG-STANDING GASTRIC TROUBLE.

W.T. writes:—Having tried a diet, recommended in The Healthy Life, for a month I find the nuts and cheese are far too heavy for the apparent weak condition of my stomach, also that the salads and casserole-baked vegetables are too irritating to the membrane of the stomach. I have no desire to return to flesh food and ordinary feeding, which I feel would not be good for me. From eggs I cannot obtain any good results. The continuance of loss of weight is worrying me, being down to eight stone from eleven stone in twelve months. I feel satisfied it is only a question of diet, if I could only strike the correct one. I am naturally most anxious to regain some of my lost strength and weight. I am at present taking bread and butter, cooked fruit, and occasionally an egg, boiled rice, vegetables and a little dried fruit. No matter how light I make my diet I still suffer after every meal with dilated stomach and irregular working of the heart. Blood circulation is still bad and constipation is gradually getting worse. As before stated, I am anxious to succeed with the reformed diet, but I am really at a loss to know which way to proceed to make any progress. As I was in South Africa twenty years, and only returned to England just before this catarrh set in, is the climate here against my progress, do you think? I am so sorry to take up so much of your time, but shall be grateful for any help you can give me which will be greatly appreciated.

It is difficult to advise how best to proceed in this case as our correspondent really ought to seek medical advice. Only in this way can he obtain really satisfactory guidance. For without knowing the state of his blood and the organs generally it is impossible to advise correctly. Speaking generally, until salads and casserole-cooked vegetables can be taken freely there can be no possible permanent cure.

In many such cases the best way to train the digestive organs into a healthy state is to keep to a diet consisting chiefly of dextrinised cereals, which must be eaten dry, with some vegetables and as little fresh fruit as possible. This to be continued until little by little the raw salad vegetables are found to agree; then the rest is easy.

A diet on the following lines would probably be a good temporary measure:—

Breakfast.—One egg lightly boiled, poached or baked, with two Granose biscuits and fresh butter, eaten dry.

Dinner.—Brusson Jeune bread (one or two rolls) with butter, and small helping of vegetables, cooked at first in the orthodox way.

Supper.—Plateful of boiled rice (cooked dry in the Indian fashion[4]) with a tablespoonful of good malt extract.

No sugar, honey, stewed fruit, or dried fruit should be taken until improvement has set in. As little fluid as possible should be taken until the stomach has regained more tone and become more normal in size.

[4] See The Healthy Life Cook Book. 1s. net (post free, 1s. 1+1/2d.).

SEVERE DIGESTIVE CATARRH.

Miss S.L.P. writes:—I should like a little help as to diet. I have just had an attack of epidemic influenza with throat trouble, so that I feel very much run down and unfit for a diet too depleting in character. For over four years I have adopted a non-flesh diet on account of a tendency to chronic catarrh of the whole alimentary tract, due to rheumatic tendencies which affect me internally rather than externally. The continuous damp weather has produced much gastric irritation, and frequent acidity.

I cannot discover a diet that is convenient and at the same time sufficiently nourishing. I lose flesh on what I take, and I have none to spare, though at one time I was inclined to be stout. My age is forty-eight.

I take three meals a day. A light breakfast either of "Maltweat" bread or "P.R." Cracker biscuits and butter, with tomato or fresh fruit or occasionally an egg. For midday meal an egg or milled cheese, or nuts or cream cheese, with a baked potato and a conservatively cooked vegetable. Occasionally I have a little salad and grated carrot, but unless I am better than usual I cannot digest these. The evening meal consists of "Maltweat" bread or "P.R." Cracker biscuits or Granose flakes, with cream cheese. As a child I suffered constantly from colds in the head, but now my troubles are oftener internal.

The action of the bowels is irregular. I depend chiefly upon an enema of warm water when constipation is present.

I never drink tea, only hot water, or Emprote and water, or occasionally vegetable juices or fruit juices. I find I am better without much fluid.

So far as it is possible to judge from this letter, this correspondent is suffering not only from stomach and bowel catarrh, but her condition as a whole is unsatisfactory. The vital force is depleted and the nervous system is not doing efficient work.

She needs suitable treatment to remove the acid and toxins with which the system is evidently clogged. This is not an easy task, for as soon as elimination begins trouble arises in the form of influenza or other similar derangements. These are probably little else but attempts on the part of nature to rouse the vital force of the body into action with a view to clearing out the clogging poisons.

Waste clearing should be done gradually. The skin should be made to act better by means of home Turkish baths, or by wet-sheet packs. Then mustard poultices can be applied along the course of the spine and massage with suitable manipulations can be applied to the muscles and bones which make up the spine. The daily practising of the excellent and simple breathing and bending exercises described in Muller's My System for Ladies[5] will be very helpful. By means such as these the body will be gradually cleared of its poisons, and so the nervous system will be made to do better work.

The diet specified can be continued.

H. VALENTINE KNAGGS.

[5] 2s. 8d. post free from the office of The Healthy Life, 3 Amen Corner, London, E.C.

* * * * *

May we ask the co-operation of all our readers during the holiday season in the following way. On holidays you are bound to meet fresh people, and make new acquaintances, and even friends. We suggest you purchase a few extra copies of THE HEALTHY LIFE before you start and hand them on to any likely to be interested. People tell us the magazine is its own recommendation. This does not mean that you need not add your own. The circulation grows steadily, but it is far short of what it might easily be if every reader were to gain one fresh reader every month.—[EDS.]

MORE APPRECIATIONS.

I want to say how very interesting and helpful I find The Healthy Life, and it is always a pleasure to buy an extra copy to give to friends, for I always feel it will do them good to read it, and perhaps make regular subscribers of them.

H. BARTHOLOMEW, Knebworth.



THE

HEALTHY

LIFE

The Independent Health Magazine.

3 AMEN CORNER LONDON E.C.

VOL. V AUGUST No. 25. 1913

There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one another.—CLAUDE BERNARD.



AN INDICATION.

The pursuit of health, considered from the negative standpoint, is the flight from pain.

And pain is the great mystery of life.

James Hinton, himself a well-known physician of his time, attempted to solve the mystery of pain by showing that it is the accompaniment of imperfection. That what is now experienced as pain might be exquisite pleasure given a higher stage of human development.

But this, after all, only shifts the mystery one step farther. Instead of the mystery of pain we have the mystery of imperfection. Yet to image perfection is always to image something incapable of growth or further development.

Take, for example, a perfect circle. So long as it remains unbroken, flawless, the line (or infinite number of lines) composing it cannot be continued or extended. But given a break in the line and it may be continued round and round, up and up (or down and down) into an infinitely ascending spiral. This possibility of extension depends on a break, on an imperfection.

It does not follow, of course, that every flaw in human nature is always the starting-point of new growth, every failure a stepping-stone to greater knowledge, but the possibility is there. It is for men to see that they do not neglect their opportunities.—[EDS.]



IMAGINATION IN PLAY.

Regular readers will recognise in this wonderfully simple and suggestive article a continuation of the series previously entitled "Healthy Brains." The author of "The Children All Day Long" is an intimate disciple of one of the greatest living psychologists, and she has a message of the first importance to all who realise that true health depends as much on poise of mind as on physical fitness.—[EDS.]

The fruit of imagination ripens into deeds actually done in the service of man: its flower brightens the whole of life and makes it fragrant, from the budding-time of children's play and laughter to the developed blossoms of the creative imagination which we call painting or poetry or music.

Play and art have this in common, that they are activities pursued for the sake of the activity itself, not as a means to any other object, not aiming at any material usefulness. Actually, of course, there is nothing more useful, on every scale of usefulness, than the development of the individual in art or play, but these would never be really themselves while an ulterior purpose formed a background to them in consciousness.

Physical exercises devised for the sake of health are a more or less pleasant form of work; they do not take the place of play. Our ordinary work is usually more or less one-sided and unbalanced in the demands it makes upon us; we therefore try to find what other set of movements will undo this unbalancement and give us back unbiased bodies. When that is done, and not till then, we get freedom, and it is at that moment that real "play" begins—the use of the freed muscles according to our own will and pleasure.

The same thing is perhaps true in connection with our minds. We all see the fallacy of the old-fashioned hustlers' cry, "Make your work your hobby; think of nothing else; let every moment be subordinated to the dominating idea of your career; put aside all sentimentalism, all laziness and self-will, all enthusiasm about things not in your own line of work."

We have come to see that this kind of effort leads often to nervous breakdown and early death; always to a certain narrowing of sympathy and hardening of method even in the career itself. So we conscientiously "take up" a hobby or a sport and set aside some hour or day for indulgence in it. We make it a duty to lay aside for the time being all idea of duties; part of our work is to learn to rest.

So far so good. But does all this go far enough?

Work imposed by any set of outer needs puts the whole being under a certain strain. The aim of remedial exercises, prescribed rest-times and legal holidays is to undo this strain, to unwind us from our coil by twisting us the other way.

When this has been satisfactorily done, too often the person responsible thinks that this is enough. But it is really and truly at this moment that one is beginning one's real life.

When the body is freed from strain and weariness is the time to leap and dance and sing and wrestle.

When the mind is free from prejudice and weariness is the time for its original activity to begin; new thoughts spring up unbidden and the creative imagination lives and grows.

(In the sphere of will, many great sages have said that an analogous sequence holds good. When the whole emotional and moral nature has thrown itself in a particular direction, and then an unwinding has taken place, the moment of completed renunciation has been said to be the dawn of some great new spiritual light.)

Who does not know the peaceful activity of a Sunday evening, the fruitful quiet of a long railway journey or sea-voyage at the end of a holiday? Two friends walk slowly home together after an exciting expedition or debate; two girls give each other their confidence while brushing their hair after a dance.

Why is this so? Nowadays people are very ready to answer the question by refusing the fact. It is waste of time not to be doing something strenuously. Rest is almost as strenuous as everything else; it is to be thorough while it is the duty on hand and is to fit exactly on to the work time, without overlapping but without interspace.

In this way too often the imagination, the really individual part of the mind, is starved and atrophied. Especially in childhood there ought to be a space left between useful work and ordered play for the individually invented games, the pursuits that are not for any definite end, for dreams and lived-out tales, when the child may make what he likes, do what he likes, and in imagination be what he likes. If we scrupulously respected this growing-time we should soon have a race of sturdier mettle altogether. Just now this particular want is probably most nearly supplied among elementary school children than among those who have more "educational advantages"; they "go out to play" in the streets for hours every day, and one cannot help thinking that it is the vitality thus evolved that keeps most of them healthy and happy in spite of many hardships.

In later life, if we really want to make something of our lives, we shall do well to insist an keeping such a margin of free time to ourselves. It need not be long. Five minutes, if one really sails away in the ship of imagination, will take us to fairyland and back again. But the five minutes (or the day in the country, or the week of quiet, or whatever we take or can get) must really and truly be free; we must have the courage to seek for what we really want, and we shall have the inestimable reward of finding what we really are.

E.M. COBHAM.



HOW MUCH SHOULD WE EAT?[6]

[6] See July number.

For some years I lived according to the advice given by "M.D." with regard to the quantity of proteid that should be taken. But experience led me to believe that it was wrong. In recent years my diet has consisted of the following quantities per annum:—

Three to four bushels of wheat. Seventy pounds of oats. One bushel of nuts (measured in the shells).

And with these foods rich in proteid, I have taken plenty of raw vegetables and fruit, and three to four gallons of olive oil.

I do not mention this as an ideal, in order to suggest another and better standard than that of "M.D." I do not think any such thing as a standard really exists or can exist. But I mention it to show how far I have travelled away from where I was.

I take it that all food reformers will agree that the main reason for food reform is to make the body a more harmonious instrument for the true life of man, and that carries with it the belief that there is some correspondence, if we cannot yet see absolute unity, between the physical and the spiritual. Now the law of life, according to Christ, is one of continual progress towards perfection and I do not see how this will harmonise with the teaching of a fixed law for the body. All my experience and observation point to a progressive law for the body, and I do not know of a single fact contrary to it.

My first point, then, is that there is no such thing as a standard of proteid needed by the body. All that can be said is this, that if you take a man who has been fed on a certain quantity for such and such a time and then feed him on a certain other quantity, alterations in the physical condition will appear. But who can say whether these changes are attributable merely to a deficiency or to a previous excess? If "M.D." and his patients take excessive food they naturally get trouble from stored poisons when they reduce the quantity. But why put all the trouble down to present deficiency instead of to previous excess? To this I can find no satisfactory answer.

If we have got our bodies into so hopeless a condition that we cannot use our God-given instincts, tastes and feelings in the first place, the wisdom of troubling much about the continuance of bodily life would be doubtful; and, in the second place, one would need most overwhelming signs of knowledge to substitute for them. But where are they? There is no agreement between those who have been taught physiology. On the one hand, "M.D." gives a proteid standard, now impossible to myself, and I believe to many others, for it would involve eating a nauseating quantity; and, on the other hand, another doctor, presumably acquainted with the same physiology, tells me I cannot eat too little, so long as I do not persistently violate true hunger and taste. Then another doctor gives quite a different standard, and a much lower one. If we discard our natural guides, which of the claimants to knowledge is to be followed, and is there any knowledge at all such as is claimed?