daly 1.
Everyone nowadays realizes the importance of the food we eat to our physical well-being. There are certain restaurants which provide a terrifying menu showing the calorie value of ench dish listed on the card. To most of us this mathematical prelude detracts from the value of the meal -but it gives a comfortable appearance of hygienic efficiency to those whose tastes are fastidious, In the East we have to be particularly careful about the contents of the larder and our well organized Health Department has laid all residents in this city under deep obligation for the work it is daty doing in preventing the influx of deleterious foods into our markets. But food has a social as well as a healthful value, We like to gather our friends around our table and can hardly be said to be intimate with a person with whom have not broken bread, founder of Christianity chose the ceremony of eating and rinking as the most sacred rite of his religion, In latter days the agape has been reduced to shadow supper but, at its me tion, ft was a true love teas:, as may be seen from inscriptions' in the catacombs at Rome, and the New Testament records that, the Corinthian Church had to be rebuked for allowing the hallowed meal to degenerate into srluttony, Wa have all read that to ent salt with " Bedouin pledges him to be responsible for the safety of his guest, albeit he had, unwittingly, entertained his deadly enemy.
In eating there is no accoun'- ing for tastes, No one can tell why one man can eat, wita srusto, food that nauseates his neighbour. There are perfectly normal people who cannot bear the sight of an og. Others dare not taste shell fish without being violently sick. And so on with pork, game and sundry other comestibles. Generally speaking, it will be found that dishes we have a particular liking for are those of which, in a bygone day, we had eaten ra~ venously in' a fit of boyish hunger. The relish we now have is a reminiscence of that hearty meal. Esau, we are told, sold his birthright for a mess of some red stuff. Commentators suggest that the dish was composed of red lentils, cooked with oil and flavoured with gar! At needed a hunter's appetite do justice to that concoction, Professor J. Arthur Thomson thas been writing, in a London magazine, on the food value of dulse and other sea-weeds. Dulse is rich in iodine content and fouine is a prophylactic against goitre and is a necessary consti-tent of a healthful diet, Confined animals sometimes suffer from this disease whilst. those running wild ave free from it because they have access to sull Licks from which they absorb the necessary iodine. Now, dulse has been eaten by crofters on the Irish coast and amongst the islands of the Weston shores of Scotland from times remote. Another palatable dish was made by. these unsophisti cated people from carrageen, "Irish moss," and this was afte given to invalids with beneficial results. Medical science has analysed these substances and recognizes their therapeutical value. But the question arises how did those illiterate peasants discover, without scientific re search, the food and medicinal value of the products of the sea? The answer is that necessity, the promptings of nature and Perimentation led to the d covery. Some hungry fisherman gathered a handful of dulse; it smelled good, tasted good and satisfied his craving for food. It made a valuable addition his scanty larder and its continued use demonstrated _its Vbealth giving quality. The fir stirrings of primeval life were in the waters that surrounded the yet unformed earth and man must still return to the sea when enervated and. sick from the over-refinements and emasculation of his artificial city life. bathes in its inv?gorating water, breathes the ozone of its salt winds and, if he is wife, eats dulse and Irish moss and returns to the stony pavements healed in body and in mind.
There is, at the moment, a controversy agitating the minds of many educated Chinese. The Government has decided, wisely decided, to register all medical practitioners, Its plan is to disqualify all those who have not Deen trained in Western schools and so eliminate the old tim: medicine man with his unonaly. ed drugs and empirical formulas. This is a reform that is bound to come but there is just a suspicion that the suggested method savours of an Amanullah reform tation and that it would be wise make haste slowly. The Chinese have practised at least four thous: Their _pharmacopeia many drugs of undoubted value. Their practitioners, in spite much hocus poons, must have a cumulated a store of experience that cannot be altogether harmful and may, in some cases, be distinctly useful. It is even possible that, like the peasantry on the coasts of Scotland anc Ireland, they have hit on a nui ber of remedies as yet unknown to Western science. Certainly no man should be allowed to prescribe for his fellows until he has passed some kind of test and if this were insisted on i ime, the old and inefficient would be weeded out and a men needed medical faculty: provided for the healing of the nation's sick.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.