DIET FOR OBSTINATE COUGH.

Miss N.S. writes:--For the last three weeks I have been troubled with a very bad cough It started in the first place with a cold in the head and then it got on my chest, and do what will I cannot get rid of it. I have been having honey and lemon juice, and also each morning have taken olive oil and lemon juice beaten up together, but without (apparently) any effect. I have bad coughing fits in the night and the next morning I do not feel up to much.

I may say that I have not taken meat for about six years, and I try to follow the kind of diet advocated in _The Healthy Life_.

I am 23 years of age and a typist in an office, which is about 4 miles from my home. I try to get out in the fresh air as much as possible to counteract any bad effects which may arise from my work. My people at home are very much opposed to my food reform sympathies and efforts.

This correspondent should consult a sensible doctor about this cough and thus be on the safe side. It is unwise to allow a cough to become chronic without ascertaining the cause of it. Coughs are often due to stomach and liver trouble, as distinguished from lung trouble. In either case a salt-free diet will greatly help. Thus

_Breakfast._--All fresh fruit, nothing else but fruit. Apples best.

(_Not_ stewed fruit).

_Lunch._--Boiled or steamed rice, done without salt; about 2 oz.

cottage cheese or a poached egg; a little raw carrot, turnip or artichoke, finely grated, with dressing of fruit-oil beaten up with a raw egg. The grated roots must be well chewed; as a change they may be cut up and cooked in a ca.s.serole with very little water.

_Dinner._--Potato baked in skin, with fresh b.u.t.ter, a little cheese, or flaked nuts, and a few plain rusks, or a saucer of P.R. Breakfast Food, dry, with cream. The honey and lemon juice should be disgarded in favour of liquorice (little bits being sucked at intervals) or of linseed tea. I have often found an obstinate cough yield to a diet which contains lactic acid b.u.t.termilk, combined with the use of the new oxygen baths. The lactic acid b.u.t.termilk can be obtained from any good dairy and should be taken in the morning fasting and at bedtime.

WATER GRAPES.

W.G.B. writes:--Referring to article in January number ent.i.tled "Grape juice for all," I think perhaps it would interest others besides myself if Dr Knaggs would give us his opinion on the value of what are commonly termed "Water Grapes," as compared with more expensive kinds.

On the Continent the grape cure is a popular method of treatment. It is especially good for those who are anaemic and underfed as well as for those who suffer in the opposite way from over-feeding. It depends upon which condition is present as to the kind of grapes selected for the cure.

Fully ripe grapes with but little acidity (water grapes) are best suited for persons suffering from anaemia and malnutrition. The unripe or sour grapes answer best for cases of over-eating a.s.sociated with constipation, gout and allied disorders of nutrition. The excess of acid and cellulose helps the bowels and promotes elimination of the gouty poisons.

Our correspondent will note that for thin people who are pale and deficient in vitality the water grapes will be found most salutary.

They are best taken alone at breakfast without the addition of any other form of food.

CEREAL FOOD IN THE TREATMENT OF NEURITIS.

E.J.H. writes:--A friend of mine who is suffering from an attack of neuritis (not badly) is desirous of trying the diet of twice-baked standard bread as recommended by Dr Knaggs in an answer to a query in _The Healthy Life_ some months since. She has asked me if Dr Knaggs would limit the quant.i.ty of this bread taken in the course of the day. If Dr Knaggs will very kindly tell me this I shall be greatly obliged.

Neuritis is a form of rheumatism or gout which involves the nerves.

Its usual starting centre is the spine itself, from which all the nerves of the body spring. The diet needs to be greatly restricted so that the poisons can be eliminated. The most important foods to cut down are the cereals because they are very slow to digest and are apt to cause constipation with its attendant self-poisoning of the system with uric and other acids. Horses and animals suffer from neuritis from over-feeding with cereals and beans, and the stockbreeder or horse expert usually restricts these foods and gives plenty of gra.s.s, hay, chaff and green clover, which corrects the trouble.

The same thing applies equally to man. He should take his cereals in the form they are the most easily a.s.similated--namely, twice-baked or dextrinised. Thus "pulled" or twice-baked bread, Granose or Melarvi biscuits, or rusks, or toasted "Maltweat" bread are the best form of cereal for people suffering from neuritis. Other treatment besides diet restriction is, of course, needed to cure neuritis, because we have to clear the clogged tissues of the poisons which are interfering with right nerve action. Thus we can resort hot alkaline baths, Turkish baths, ma.s.sage and Osteopathic stretching movements to help in this respect.

H. VALENTINE KNAGGS.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | #Back Numbers# | | | | If readers who possess copies of the first number of _The | | Healthy Life_ (August 1911) will send them to the Editors, | | they will receive, in exchange, booklets to the value of | | threepence for each copy. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

THE

HEALTHY

LIFE

The Independent Health Magazine.

3 AMEN CORNER LONDON E.C.

VOL. V DECEMBER No. 29. 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.

There are some statements, the very simplicity and truth of which create a shock--for some people. For instance, there are certain seekers after health who ignore and are shocked by the very obvious truth that "brain is flesh." A brain poisoned by impure blood is no fit instrument for the spirit to manifest through, and "mental suggestion" must inevitably prove of no avail as a cure if the origin of the impure blood be purely material.

It is just as futile, on the other hand, to treat the chronic indigestion that arises from persistent worry, or indulgence in pa.s.sion, by one change after another in the dietary. The founder of h.o.m.oeopathy insisted that there was no such thing as a physical "symptom" without corresponding mental and moral symptoms. "Not soul helps flesh more than flesh helps soul." Thus the Scientist and the Poet come to the same truth, albeit by different ways.--[EDS.]

PLAIN WORDS AND COLOURED PICTURES.

While most of us would at first sight find fault with Mr G.K.

Chesterton's sweeping advice--

"And don't believe in anything That can't be told in coloured pictures,"

many would probably end by endorsing it. But we should do so only because we were able to give a very wide and varied meaning to "coloured pictures."

No one ever made a coloured picture of the "wild west wind"; but there are plenty of coloured pictures in which there is no mistaking its presence. We all believe in wireless telegraphy (now that it is an accomplished fact) which is, in itself, untranslatable into colour or line; but its mechanism can be photographed, and its results in the world of men and ships are in all the ill.u.s.trated papers. Music, which is pure sound, is to some the surest path to the Reality behind this outward show things; yet to some at least of such music is indeed form and colour, even though the colours be beyond the rainbow. For in truth, everything worth believing in, all those things, those ideas, which renew the springs of our life, have form and they have colour.

Even to the colour-blind one word differeth from another in glory.

This is no idle fancy, no mere subject for academic debate: it is the most practical subject in the world. For even as the body is fed not by food alone but by the living air, so is the spirit nourished not alone by right action but by inspiring ideas. Ideas are pictures; and the best ideas are coloured pictures.

Hence the great value of words. It is idle to speak of "words, idle words," as though they were the transient froth on the permanent ocean of thought. They are the vehicle, the body of thought. If the thought be shallow or silly, the words will indeed be "idle." But if the idea be inspiring the words will be the channel of that inspiration.

The greater part of this power in words is lost to us to-day.

Everything tempts us to hurry over words. We talk too quickly to be able to pay that respect to words which they deserve; and we read the newspaper, the magazine, the novel, the play, the poem, with the same disastrous haste. We devour the words but lose their essence. Hence there is a grave danger that through this neglect we shut out one of the main streams by which our life must be fed if it is not to shrink into mere fretful existence.

There is a curious idea in some minds that fine language consists of long words difficult to understand. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Most of the great words--the words of power, as the old Kabalists called them--are short words, words in common use. And how common is the sound of them in the mouth of the preacher! Not long ago I heard an intelligent and cultured man reading one of the many beautiful pa.s.sages from the English Bible:--