July 23.
'N'eRE is a literary bent among assistant officers of the Health Department which breaks Out irrepressible when the Chief is away. Not that we would be so discourteous to Dr. Stanley as to accuse him of a want of artistic tastes, he, a man who criticizes Sung paintings and makes playmates of hamadryads. But health reports are for bim a thing apart, and so it is only when he goes on leave that his subordinate has a chance to gratify the ''cacoethes soribendi."' Some years ago Dr. Moore gave vent to a phrase, among many good ones with which his report abounded, which has become immortal. ''Moore's; pear-shaped men"' are still with us in name as well as in fact, in "all bars and places where they drink,"" And now Dr. Noel Davis, in last Thursday's Municipal Gazette, with a strong sense of his duty to say something appropriate to this "'time of greatest danger from intestinal infections," yet striving to sugar-coat the pill of dietetic wisdom with the sweets of verbal adornment—of which he speaks, with needless! deprecation, as '"'rather of the nature of platitudes," yet per-ha "not out of place."'
Foreign man chow too much,'' say the Chinese, of which, (in general, there can certainly be no doubt. Tt is a truism that more people die of over-eating than over-drinking. Perhaps Dr. Davis is not quite sure about this, as will be seen presently. However, he gives first nace in his recommendations to "'light—easily digested meals'' with meat for most people not more than once a day. We wish he would publish some specimen menus. Ex. perience teaches that opinions differ widely as to what is light and still more as to what easily digested. Moreover, in most establishments the lady of the cannot doubt. The Far East discusses its inside with a freedom and picturesqueness which would petrify the West, and the heaviest dinner party grows animated over what Dr. Davis delicately describes as ''disorders house is away, and the average of the intestinal tract.'' But man left to himself cannot order whether he will be obeyed is, we a@ meal except in a restaurant fear, another question. Most of with a menu to help him out. So us have reached the stage of he falls back on the old hen of being ''a> fool or a physician'' China,'' pow scandalously dear, long before forty, and each one by the way, a furious prohibition has his own pet theory of how to against banana fritters more than escape being called the one or once a week, and makes up for calling in the other. One man the monotony of his meal by the trembles at the sight of an' overvariety of his beverages. On this head fan; another will eat any-subject Dr. Davis becomes very thing so long as it is not '"'twice severe, quoting from Arnold cooked''; a third declares that Bennett on ''the morning after fish is the only diet for summer the night before,'' and admonish-weather, while a fourth is posiing us that ''every surgeon ce! tive that fish fill half the beds siders alcohol his greatest enemy in the hospitals. We are As we have no wish for a con-all agreed that constant supertroversy with the W. C, T. U., vision of the kitchen is indis-we shall leave them to their] pensable, but we all have a secret delight in Dr. Davis's dicta un-uneasy feeling that, if we effec-challenged. But we like him tively practised what we so glibly better on the subject of clothing. preach, the servants would leave This in the best manner of Sir in a body. In the end we fall Farad Bond: back resignedly on the' wisdom Loosely woven cotton or linen of Jerome K. Jerome: Enough underclothing is the best, The is as good as a feast, but too much fibres are: smooth and unirritating: is as bad as a meal''; and once they absorb moisture quickly and part with it quickly, thus allowing again from the same author:
lent and constant action of the "What the eye doesn't see the skin. Silk is less absorbent, and st—, intestinal tract, doesn't get wool still less so. The imbricated upset over.'" fibres of wool irritate the skin, and -inerease the tendency to prickly heat. The outer garments prevent chill, which would be caused by too
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.