With regard to the rarity of the first group, I have been struck by the extreme reluctance shown by medical men in this country with whom I have discussed the question to accept the statement that these abdominal emergencies are indeed uncommon in the Punjab or in primitive tribes generally. The usual argument is that the cases exist but that they do not come to hospital.
If cases of strangulated hernia come to hospital and submit freely to operation, why should cases of gangrenous appendicitis be left at home ? If the Punjab peasant be willing to submit to operation for the enucleation of an enlarged prostate, why should he display this peculiar modesty with regard to his appendix or his gall-bladder ? A modesty which fades and withers away when it is a question of an operation for a liver abscess.
Operations for liver abscess are common enough in the Punjab, but operations for acute appendicitis are as rare as operations for gastric or duodenal ulcer or their sequelae. Indeed, it is possible for a surgeon to spend twenty years in practice in the Punjab and never to see one of the cases enumerated above.-COLONEL HALLILAY, The Practitioner, January, 1925.
FLESH meant, like alcohol, as has already been said, is a stimulant. It therefore stirs up, both in men and animals, all that is pugnacious, selfish and cruel when they partake of it. This fact must be patent to all. Let my readers sum up in their minds all the different kinds of animals they can think of that are vegetarians, and they will find that cruelty is the exception. Then consider the carnivorous ones and they will find cruelty to be the rule, and whether in man or animal, these qualities are developed in like proportion to the animal food partaken of.
And mark the difference in the two extremes, the gentle herbivorous deer and the cruel carnivorous tiger. It is interesting also to note that from the vegetarian animals we get all the workers, while from the purely flesh of animals that have been fed on vegetarian diet. Of the pig that lives on a mixed diet, the preference is for the “farm” or “home fed” that has been fed on barley meal, rather than for the flesh of the animal that has been kept at the back of a slaughter house.
I remember as a boy seeing, one Sunday afternoon, the top masts only showing above the sea level off Bembridge, Isle of Wight, of the Euridice training ship that had turned turtle earlier in the day, and about six hundred young lives lost. the dead bodies were being washed ashore more or less all the summer. Incidentally there was a great harvest of mackerel that summer, and it was reported that they came up the Solent to feed on the dead bodies. The fishermens harvest was thus finished, and hundreds of tons of the fish were accordingly used of manure.
Vegetarians contend that it is far more important to abstain from flesh than it is to abstain from strong drink, in as much as the greater includes the less, and the former included the latter. Let us bring up all our youths and maidens as vegetarians and we shall have no drunkards. Persuade the moderate to become vegetarians and they will soon, from choice, obtain from strong drink also, for this country of ours has yet to produce such a strange creature as a drunken vegetarian.
It is a truism that in proportion to the quantity of drink sold, so are the people degraded. But surely it will be said that there is no parallel to this in vegetarianism. Is this so? Where slaughter and bloodshed are most prevalent, there the people become the most brutalized and degraded. East London will illustrate this. There, years ago, slaughter houses were numbered by the hundred, and little children thus became accustomed to scenes of violence and cruelty from childhood, accordingly crime and brutality were rampant.
The late W.T. Stead saw a great deal of the world, but a town in America perhaps more than all others arrested his attention. He stops, and thinks and then he writes: “If Christ came to Chicago.” But why, it may be asked, is this so much blacker than other cities? The answer is because it is a huge shambles for the supply of tinned meat, for a large portion of the civilized world.
Again this business, like the drink traffic, brutalized in some measure everyone engaged in it, from the cruel drovers to the heartless slaughtermen, and from the slaughtermen to the butchers. The law recognizes this whether we choose to admit it or not, in as much as that it will not allow a butcher to act on a jury in a murder trial; his familiarity with violence and bloodshed having, in the eyes of the law, made him an unfit person to do so. Each species of animal which a nation is in the habit of killing for food, individuals also treat with correspondingly less consideration and regard for their rights than they do other species.
Horses, for example, the most humane part of the community will let them live as long as possible, and many tradesmen, farmers and others would rather turn them out into the fields to end their days, than take their lives. Even the dead body of a dog or stag brings forth the exclamation, “Poor thing”, and people get out of the way as soon as possible. But the same kind ladies will go into a butchers shop, and although surrounded by the carcasses of cattle that were but yesterday adding picturesqueness to the valley or lambs that were then skipping about so joyfully in the meadows, yet not a feeling of sympathy escapes them.
A great waste undoubtedly takes place by the yearly destruction of the vast amount of grain that is turned into strong drink, so likewise, from a vegetarian stand point a greater waste takes each year. The ground that is now used for the feeding of cattle and sheep is sufficient to produce fruit, vegetables and cereals to feed a vast population, and so save millions sterling per annum, now paid to the foreigner.
A noble young student with a countenance it was good to look upon, a native of India, who was from religious convictions as abstainer from meat, as likewise had been for generations all his ancestors, as far back as he knew before him, once told the writer that we Christians would have no influence among his people whatever so long as we continued to slay Gods creatures and to shed their blood, for whenever a New Teacher came among them they first enquired into his form of diet, and it the new religion had not lifted its adherents, in this respect, up to their platform of living, then always they refused to have anything to do with it.
We who would be the saviours of world from the drink curse, should also be the most capable of delivering it from the bondage of the flesh pots, unto a cleaner, nobler and purer mode of living, the road to which is sacrifice, and the hill to climb is self-denial, and from those heights obtain a clearer vision of the land that is to be; and a greater faith in the time when the wolf shall dwell the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the lion shall eat straw like an ox, and nought shall hurt of destroy in all Gods holy mountain.
Though the Jews are mostly town dwellers (four-fifths of the Jews live in cities) and largely engaged in indoor occupations, such as tailoring, boot-making, etc., their mortality from tuberculosis is everywhere less than that of the people amongst whom they live.
The Jewish mother suckles her children, and knows better than her Gentle neighbour how to feed them with good and nourishing food. Dr. D.C. MUTHU, Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Its Etiology and Treatment.
Henry followed in his father's footsteps, obtaining his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Durham in 1891. At the age of 27 he arrived in Melbourne in April 1894 aboard the Port Albert. He was registered as a medical practitioner in Victoria on 4 May 1894.
It appears that Dr Cook already believed in homœopathy, possibly because of his father's influence, as in 1895 Dr Cook took the position of Resident Surgeon of the Melbourne Homœopathic Hospital . (This position was previously held by Dr James Cook, unrelated, who resigned in March 1895). He was listed in the 1896 & 1897 editions of the Melbourne Post Office Directory as being Resident Medical Officer at the Melbourne Homœopathic Hospital, but not in the 1898 edition.
In 1901 he moved to Sale in Eastern Victoria, where he ran a practice in York Street. By 1909 his practice was at Wyndham Street, Shepparton.
By 1919 he had moved to 2 Studley Park Road, Kew, where he died on 7 May, 1923.