I came across this news item in the Cambrian Daily Leader for 18 February 1914. It comes from a completely different world.
Dr. George Arbour Stephens, a Swansea physician and social worker, carried out researches in connection “with that disease which has become almost fashionable nowadays, appendicitis.” He believed that it was due to the increased consumption of bananas. “The irritating effects of bananas are not to be wondered at when we remember that they are intended for food for (……..) and not for white men…whose country and climate produce food of quite a different, though more satisfactory, nature…I have made enquiries of people who have suffered from appendicitis, and I found in many of them that they had indulged extensively in bananas… Cases of appendicitis are rare amongst those living “below the poverty line,” since they regard bananas as luxuries.”
