In all Queries relating to health difficulties it is essential that full details of the correspondent's customary diet should be clearly given.
Correspondents are earnestly requested to write on one side only of the paper, giving full name and address, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.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 butter 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 butter 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 butter, and home-made plain cake.
Supper (8.30).—Slice of bread and butter; 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 encumbered 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 ¼lb. of bicarbonate of soda and a ¼lb. 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.