Diplomas in Psychological Medicine
NEWS AND COMMENT.
Four of the leading medical schools in Great Britain,?those connected with the universities of Edinburgh, Durham, Manchester, and Leeds,?have already made provision for granting diplomas in psychological medicine, and other universities are seriously considering the subject. “Psychological medicine,” as the phrase is employed in English journals, seems to include what we know as clinical psychology, together with a good deal of psychiatry. Resident medical officers in English institutions for the feebleminded are being required to have had a training in psychology, and in making appointments of medical officers in insane asylums prefer ence is being given to candidates who have had a similar psychological training.
Department of Agriculture issues Warning against Non-scientific Diet Systems. The U. S. Department of Agriculture has recently had called to its attention, by letters from people all over the country, serious misstatements as to the effects of foods or certain diets recommended by self-styled “experts in dietetics”. As a result of these letters, the department specialists have secured the literature and recommendations of a number of these people and have made a careful study of the things they recommend as diets. The Department has issued the following statement covering this matter:
“In view of the wide spread of literature and advice of so-called ‘diet experts,’ it seems desirable to warn people against adopting the dietary recommendations of those without real scientific standing in the community. Some of the advocates of freak diets are sincere but are themselves deluded; while others are fakers, who seek to make monetary gain by advising peculiar systems of diet. Neither class can offer trustworthy advice. In most of the recommendations of these self-established ‘experts,’ there is hardly a shadow of reason, though they may seem plausible. One of their methods of reasoning is to use isolated and often unrelated facts of science as evidence that their peculiar system is of value. That is, they generally start out with a certain idea, and then strive to prove that they are right by seeking data which seem to establish their theory; but they completely ignore statements in current and historical scientific literature which would negative their contentions. In other words, they completely overlook or do not see the importance of discoveries by scientists which go counter to what they want to believe. It would be easy, following this same system of taking isolated facts away from their context, to produce just as much of the same kind of evidence that these ‘food experts’ are wrong as they adduce to prove that they are right. In neither case, however, would the method lead to real scientific conclusions.
“Many of these so-called diet systems lay great emphasis on raw foods. Now there is no objection to anyone’s eating raw food if he likes it, or finds after experiment that it agrees with him, provided it is of good quality, free from contamination, and wholesome. The truth of the matter is, however, that man’s chances of health are best when he eats with moderation a diet made up of clean, wholesome, ordinary foods, well prepared in the usual ways. Such a diet will include some articles to be cooked and others to be eaten raw, such as bread, cereals, fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, milk, butter, cheese, eggs, etc. These articles should be of good quality, free from dirt (visible and invisible) and adulteration, and well prepared.
“As a general proposition, raw food is not cleaner than cooked foods. Proper cooking sterilizes foods, and so renders innocuous pathogenic bacteria and other organisms possibly harmful. Raw foods have to be very carefully washed and cleaned before eating, and as a general rule simple washing, while it will get rid of most of the dirt, will not remove all the bacteria, insect eggs, spores of fungi, etc., that may adhere to them. If the systems of pseudoreasoning followed by some of these diet experts were logical, it would be possible to draw the conclusion that no one should eat lettuce or other salads, or raw vegetables and fruits. This would not be warranted by science.
“In some of the literature circulated by the advocates of raw food, their correspondents are urged not to eat animal foods because they say meat is filled with bacteria. This is not true. The surface of meat is not sterile, but the interior is, except in rare cases. We do not eat raw meat, except dried beef, or something similar, but cause it to be cooked, and this sterilizes it. In most cases where people have suffered, or think that they suffer, from eating meat or any other normal article of diet, the trouble lies not with the actual article but either in the imagination of the consumer or in the fact that the food has not been kept clean, or properly prepared and properly handled after it is cooked. “In many cases, people on beginning a radically new diet, whether it has direct curative value or not, gain or think they gain a benefit. Any marked change in diet or cooking would produce the same effect, because change itself is often a benefit. The man or woman undertakes the new diet feeling convinced that it will help some real or fancied ailment, and expects results so strongly that imagination supplies them. Some of the cases so benefited are simply transient forms of digestive disturbances. Most of these feelings of discomfort quickly pass by themselves, if we do not dwell upon them and worry about them; but if the person tries a new diet, he is very apt to attribute all improvement to that diet, whether it has any direct bearing on the case or not. In cases of serious digestive disturbances, sufferers should consult a physician of known ability and known standing in their community. To submit such cases for treatment by mail is as foolish as it would be for a man having a complicated and highly specialized business trouble to ask someone who had never seen his factory, and knew nothing about the business except the data he could supply in answer to a set of questions, to supply him with a positive remedy at long-distance. “Much of the advice on diet which has passed from individual to individual, and much of the supposed scientific advice now being sold for a price by some of the food advisers, is really little more than folk lore. A great many of the statements which are used as arguments by the experts for their diets have been traced by the Government specialists, and found to come from works on diet written so long ago as to be no longer considered of value except to the student of the history of dietetics, or else they have been separated from qualifying statements which would make the interpretation given them by the commercial users wholly unwarranted.
“These circulars of misinformation about diet find their prey principally among people who are always fancying that they have some complaint. If people remain in good physical condition year after year, and observe no marked change in weight, seem in good health and spirits, and are eating any simple and normal mixed diet, they have no need to worry about their food.
“People can expect to be lighter in weight in summer than in winter. As a person grows older he should begin to cut down the amount he eats, and depend on a less complex and simpler diet. It is often said that when a person passes forty, he begins to need a different diet. The reason given is that he does not exercise so energetically as he did, and consequently does not need the same amount and kind of food that was required to keep up his energy for more active physical work.” In concluding their remarks upon food, the government dieticians offer the following sensible advice to the public: “If you like raw food better than anything else, eat it. If you like bread and milk twice a day, eat it. The main thing, as one grows older, is to eat in moderation and then, as always, to see that what you eat is clean and that the cooked food you eat is originally in good condition and that it is well cooked. If you eat raw vegetables and fruits and raw milk, take precautions to see that they are clean before they enter your system. If something really disagrees with you, and the fault lies actually with the article rather than with the method by which it has been kept or cooked, stop eating that kind of food. If you experience serious discomfort which persists, consult the best physician you can discover. “Be wary of people who offer to give you advice or to cure you without ever seeing you. Finally, bear in mind that each human body has individual characteristics, and that a diet which admirably suits one man who lives in a certain location and does a certain kind of work may not be adapted to another individual living in a different climate and doing a different kind of work.” Fire Protection in Public Schools.
Americans spend one dollar per inhabitant per year in building new school houses, and let those school houses burn down at the rate of more than one for every school day in the year.
These facts were discovered some months ago by the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, and its officers promptly took up a study of fire protection in public schools. They found that the methods of such protection are comparatively cheap, simple, and easily applied. Any city which resolves that daily school attendance shall not mean daily danger of death, can readily put in motion measures which will make all its school buildings panic proof, all its new buildings fire pi oof, and all its old buildings fire retarding. The whole matter is so important and its solution so simple, that the Foundation has published and is distributing at the nominal cost of ten cents, a pamphlet which tells in pictures and in terse sentences the magnitude of the danger with its appropriate remedy. A map shows that only two states, Ohio and Massachusetts, have good fire laws, fifteen have fair to poor fire laws, and in thirty-one states school children are absolutely unprotected by law from the risk of death by fire.
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