—«_ 10 THE EDITOR OP THE PBESS. Sir, —I hope that the medical profession will take the article on "Bread and Bread Making" which appears in to-day's "Press" into their most serious consideration. I cannot imagine any subject which so presses for attention. I have long suspected that to the modern roller-made flour most, or at least many, of our present physical ills are due. There is no doubt, I think, that the advance of dyspepsia and indigestion is coincident with the coming of this flour into general use. It is a question whether the prevalence of ansemia may not be in part due to the same cause. There is again the immense increase of the horrible disease cancer. Surgery may be somewhat more successful in dealing with this disease than of yore, but the medical profession have entirely failed to suggest the real predis posing causes. Causes, indeed, liave been surmised, such as milk, meat, tomatoes, etc., but these suggestions do not come with any kind of authority. I wish to ask whether it is altogether absurd to think that roller flour and cancer may stand in the position of cause and effect* Your article states that flour made under the Schweitzer system "retains many of the nutritive elements which the roller system eliminates," and contains "twice as much phosphatic mate rial." The experience of thousands of per sons is that without a large amount of wheat meal bread they suffer from constipa tion and indigestion. This means that roller flour impoverishes the blood and deducts from its vitality, and if so what more natural than that the effects of a blow, whieih. in a normal state of health would quickly pass away, in an impure and weak state of the blood might continue for long, and produce a state of things favourable to the develop ment of malignant diseases? One thing is certain, that a free indulgence in modern bread is a thing which many people are be ginning to dread. Should' some "enterpris ing baker," as suggested by you, set up the Schweitzer system in Christehurch, I have no doubt that he will be inundated with customers. Mv name will carry no weight, so I sign myself.— Yours, etc., "FLOUR REFORM." December 11th, 1900.
