NEW HOPE FOR THE ARTHRITIC

Dr. Dong's The Arthritic's Cookbook has a considerable following among persons afflicted with joint diseases despite the Arthritis Foundation's fiat-out disavowal of any link between diet and the disease which has a hundred variations. Certainly, there is nothing in Dr. Dong's ""simple Chinese diet"" which will harm anyone. Dong believes that arthritis in all forms is triggered by chemicals and/or allergens. Since no one knows which ones, Dong's prophylactic diet eliminates all milk products, fruit and fruit juice, beef, veal and pork and chocolate. The book is filled with the usual testimonials from patients. One man improved so markedly that he went off to Antarctica to study the sex habits of penguins. The doctor emphasizes that the people who come to him are usually quite desperate having been doctored with aspirin, prednisone, Indocin, butazolidine, gold and many other potent and potentially harmful drugs. Dong took his degree at the Stanford Medical School and his discussion of the disease and many theories of what causes this most common of cripplers is superior to what we've seen in most popular manuals. Unlike Dr. Jarvis, he of the honey and vinegar treatments, Dong doesn't sound like a crank--though of course he has no hard evidence to support his nutrition theories. Mostly, he got it from his old father who used to say: Bing chung how yup, woh chung how chut--""sickness enters through the mouth, and catastrophe comes out of the mouth.