_Correspondents are earnestly requested to write on _one side only of the paper_, giving full name and address, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.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.]

ECZEMA AS A SIGN OF RETURNING HEALTH.

Mrs M.K. writes:--Until the last few years I have been subject to sciatica and a certain amount of dry eczema. About a year ago my health greatly improved, with the exception of the eczema, which has much increased the last year, coming out in large angry spots which irritate. I am 69, small, spare and white, have never been strong until a year ago, have led a sedentary life, being an artist. Three years ago I left off eating meat. My diet at present is:

_On rising._--Cup of hot rain-water.

_Breakfast_ (8 A.M.)--Unfired Bread with b.u.t.ter and pine nuts; cup of weak tea, no sugar.

_At 11._--One raw apple.

_Dinner_ (1 P.M.)--One lightly boiled egg or an omelette, with "Artox" home-made bread, and b.u.t.ter conservatively cooked celery or broccoli; stiff milk pudding with eggs in it, or "Artox"

pastry.

_Tea_ (5 P.M.).--Weak China tea "Artox" bread, and b.u.t.ter, and home-made plain cake.

_Supper_ (8.30).--Slice of bread and b.u.t.ter; tumblerful of hot rain-water sipped at bedtime.

I have not been able to digest uncooked vegetables, excepting lettuce; nor do I eat other fruit than apples; any sweet things cause acidity. I do not suffer with constipation.

In this case it will be noted that the skin disease occurred simultaneously with a marked improvement in health. This shows that Nature was adopting her usual plan of forcing the impurities outwards to the surface and that the change of diet made this possible. With her body less enc.u.mbered with waste a return of health became possible.

The plan now to adopt is not to check this skin trouble but to cure it along safe lines by amending the diet and purifying the skin itself by means of warm alkaline baths.

These baths, which should be taken twice a week at first, are made by adding a 1/4lb. of bicarbonate of soda and a 1/4lb. of "Robin" starch to an ordinary hot bath at a temperature of 105 degrees, which can be gradually increased to 110 degrees as the correspondent can bear it.

In this the bather stays for from ten to twenty minutes to well soak out the acids and the oily greasy waste from the surface. The starch is added because it moderates the action of the alkali and leaves a comfortable gloss on the skin after the bath is finished. The bath gradually clears the poisons from the skin and encourages the free action of perspiration, thus promoting the further elimination of waste acid poisons and at the same time clearing the skin and making it healthy.

The next thing to do is to amend the diet so that as little waste as possible shall be formed. Rice is the cereal that contains the least amount of waste of any kind and this should therefore be the cereal selected. The wholemeal, although good for most people, is not suited to this case. A strict salt-free diet is also necessary, as it is often the retention of salt in the system that leads to the presence of eczema. The following amended diet should suit the case, and it should be continued until the skin has quite cleared itself:--

_On rising._--Cup of filtered boiled rain-water.

_Breakfast._--Cottage cheese, 2 oz.; rice, boiled or steamed without salt (large plateful), with Granose biscuits or toasted "Maltweat"

bread.

_At_ 11 A.M.--More rain-water (not fruit).

_Lunch._--The same as breakfast.

_Tea._--Hot rain-water only.

_Supper, 6.30._--The same as breakfast.

When the skin is quite clear the correspondent can return to the wholemeal bread (but biscuits made with "Artox" would be better than the yeastless bread), and also to a more varied diet generally, as at present.

DEAFNESS.

J.G. writes:--My hearing got bad about twenty years ago, caused I think by a cold in the head. When in bed I can hear the tick of a watch with the left ear but the other is almost stone deaf. I am not much at a loss in ordinary conversation, but in trying to hear people speak I lose much of what is said. Although I have no real pain, my head is rarely clear, feeling full and congested. I have now and again a slight sensation of giddiness or reeling.

The right ear runs some offensive matter, and there is always a hissing sound. I live what is, I think, a simple life, but I must confess to a little smoking. My general health is good. I am a working farmer and fairly active for one of my age (69). My diet is generally as follows:

_On rising._--One or two cups of warm water, sometimes with lemon juice.

_Breakfast._--An apple or orange, oatcake and dairy b.u.t.ter.

Baker's bread and one cup of tea.

_Lunch._--Nil, or perhaps I should say that I eat an apple or orange before each meal or a bit of turnip or even cabbage.

_Supper._--Potatoes with fish, and milk pudding. On some days it may be broth with meat cooked in it.

_Before retiring._--Nothing but water, or at other times oatcake and one cup of milk.

There does not seem to be much prospect of this correspondent recovering the hearing of his right ear, as the conditions have lasted so long. He might, however, certainly try by diet and hygiene to get rid of the unpleasant discharge and the noises. To effect this he should carefully syringe the ear once or twice a day with a weak solution (1 grain to the ounce) of permanganate of potash, using an all-rubber ear-syringe.

Then he should get someone to well stretch the upper bones of the spine and to ma.s.sage well the muscles at the back of the neck to induce, thereby, a better circulation in the nerves and blood-vessels which proceed from that part of the spine into the ears. In this way he will be able to ensure a removal of the clogging poisons which are lurking in the bad ear and thus promote less noises and a better health state of the ears generally. The diet should be amended as follows:--

_On rising._--One or two cups of warm water, with lemon juice added.

_At 8. Breakfast_.--Apples, oranges or other fruit only. _Take plenty of fruit at this meal and eat it at no other time._

_At 12. Lunch._--One boiled egg or some cream cheese: Oatcakes and b.u.t.ter or good wholemeal biscuits ("P.R." or "Ixion" kinds) and b.u.t.ter, and a plateful of finely grated raw roots (carrots, turnip, etc.).

_Tea meal._--One cupful of Hygiama, using water in place of milk.

_Dinner._--Cheddar cheese or cottage cheese (the latter is best); potatoes and a green vegetable, cooked by baking or steaming, without salt. No broth or meat. (Meat and especially meat broths are very undesirable in this case.)

_Before retiring._--Hot water only.

ANOTHER CASE OF DEAFNESS.

J.A.B. writes:--I have been a reader of _The Healthy Life_ for the last six months, and am suffering from a complaint since I was three years old. When three years old I was attacked by scarlet fever and on getting better I had a discharge from my right ear. This continued for several years, then it would disappear and reappear at short intervals of say a few weeks.

This last few years the discharge has disappeared for six months, only to reappear again for a week with severe pains in back over right shoulder and right side of neck. I always feel weak and tired when discharge reappears and sometimes experience pains in the head and cannot remember anything for a few minutes.

This correspondent needs a suitable diet in order to purify his blood stream and to promote elimination of bodily poisons which are evidently affecting his ears. He also needs suitable ma.s.sage and stretching movements applied to the upper part of the spine, which is functioning badly. Then he can supplement this by taking Turkish baths or wet sheet packs to promote a free action of the skin and thus clear away poisonous waste from the system. The same diet as recommended to the previous correspondent should be tried.

CONCERNING COTTAGE CHEESE.

Mrs C.E.J. writes:--I have been making cottage cheese curdling the milk with lemon juice, as recommended in _The Healthy Life_.

Suppose the milk contains disease germs, would not this cheese be injurious, as the milk is not sterilised by being brought to boiling point? I have also been drinking the whey from the same, as it as given in _The Healthy Life Beverage Book_. I notice in a reply given in this month's issue that Dr Knaggs states that the whey of the milk is the dangerous element. Since reading this answer I have been somewhat in doubt as to drinking the whey. I should like to know if it can be taken without harmful effects.

Ordinary unboiled milk, free from preservatives, is far less dangerous to health than boiled milk, because Nature inserts in the raw milk certain germs known as the lactic-acid-producing bacilli, which protect us from the injurious germs. These lactic germs cause the milk to go sour and produce in this way the much-extolled soured or curdled milk. They convert the sugar of the whey into lactic acid by a process of fermentation. If milk is boiled it cannot go sour because the germs natural to it have been destroyed by the heat and it becomes necessary to introduce fresh lactic germs into the boiled milk as is done in the artificial production of curdled milk. Failing this, milk will undergo, not lactic fermentation, but _putrefaction_, and thereby develop highly dangerous qualities.

When a person takes soured milk its lactic acid acts as a powerful germ destroyer and in a certain concentration it actually kills the lactic germs as well. It also keeps down the disease-producing germs of putrefaction which work in an alkaline medium (opposite to acid) by depriving them of the sugar of the whey.

Boiled milk, if set on one side, in warm weather, speedily becomes alkaline and putrid or putrefactive. It is in this condition that, when babies take it, they are made dreadfully ill with diarrhoea and inflammation of the stomach and bowels. Hence it is the chief cause of the appalling mortality among infants in hot weather.

Mrs F.K.J. need have no fear of any harm coming to her as a result of eating cottage cheese, but she should not take the whey unless she has decided to undergo a whey cure and take _nothing but whey_; in this latter case, there being no other foods taken, there will be no germs to act harmfully upon it. If there is much flatulence and stomach or bowel trouble sweet milk or whey will simply feed the germs which are the cause of the digestive trouble, or self-poisoning, and are thus far better discarded.