AN ANGLO-INDIAN.—It is not necessary for Englishmen to eat as much in India as they do in England, and the reason for this is very easy to explain. We eat to produce energy. That energy is of two kinds—heat and work. Four-fifths of the energy of an Englishman in England—four-fifths of what he eats—produce heat, one-fifth only produces work. The normal temperature of the body is 98.6° F. If we lived in a constant temperature of 98.6° F., it would be unnecessary for the body to produce heat at all, and so four-fifths of its energy would be saved. Therefore if man had been constructed to live in a temperature of 98.6° F., he would only require one-fifth of his ordinary diet. But even in the hottest countries the body does produce heat, because it is its nature to do so; but it has to dispose of that heat at once, because the temperature of the body in health is constant. In very hot countries the body has to keep itself cooler than the surrounding air—it has to dispose of more heat than it produces. It is therefore not difficult to understand why persons in hot countries need, and should take, considerably less food than those in England; and, conversely, the inhabitants of cold countries require a very liberal diet. Also, that Europeans in a hot country require more food than the natives, because the bodies of the latter have learnt, through many generations, not to produce so much excessive heat as the bodies of the Europeans who are “green” to the climate.
KARAMEA.—1. To cure corns, first wash your feet in hot water and soap and leave them soaking for fifteen minutes. Then take them out of the water; thoroughly dry them and paint the corn with “solvent.” You must not let the solvent touch the surrounding skin. The solvent is made by mixing together salicylic acid, twenty grains; tincture of Indian hemp, five drops; alcohol, two drams; and collodion to the ounce. Paint the corn with this preparation every evening for some days, until the corn drops off. With very hard corns the treatment may take some weeks, but we have never known it to fail, and it is absolutely safe.—2. The sensation of a hand or foot going to sleep is almost always due to pressure upon a nerve, such as occurs from sitting on a hard chair for many minutes at a time.