HEALTH NOTES by A. J. B.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 1, 1901

HEALTH NOTES.

By A. J. B.

COMMON sense and good cheer are good ingredients to mix with one’s food.

One of the frequent and common-sense utterances of Elder A. T. Jones upon the subject of healthful living is: “Live upon your victuals—not upon your vitals.”

A prominent New York physician recommends fasting for that dread malady, consumption. He claims that in a few days this method of treatment dissolves the lung sores and takes away the disease.

True health reform is positive, not negative. It not only tells people what not to wear, eat, or do, but also what is good to wear, eat, and do. It is more important for one to know what to do than it is for him to know all about what not to do.

One’s health is affected more or less by the condition of the mind; but not so much as Christian Scientists would have us believe. An optimist will recover from a disease sooner than a pessimist. But, in each case, the physical causes of the disease must be removed before recovery can possibly follow.

Germs abound everywhere, and cannot be avoided. The all-important thing is not merely to dodge as many of them as possible, but rather, to build up such a fund of physical vitality as shall annihilate all the germs that do get into the system—to create a preponderance of the health germs over the disease germs.

The great efficacy of physical outdoor exercise is easily seen in the fact that hard-working lumbermen enjoy excellent health, in spite of their unhealthful diet of greasy pork and beans, while sedentary persons, without exercise, enjoy poor health in spite of the fact that they daily partake of the best health foods. Good food alone cannot produce good health.

There are more people who die from overeating than from starvation. The writer’s grandfather lived to be a very old man. He made it a rule to always arise from the table a bit hungry.

It is said that those who work in sulphur mines are never afflicted with colds or with la grippe. Therefore certain persons sprinkle powdered sulphur in their stockings during the winter months. The fumes permeate the entire body, and discolor all silver found upon the person. Whatever may be said as to the foolishness of the practice, it is certainly one which can result in no harm. Many physicians prescribe worse medicines.

While it is true that many new diseases are springing into existence, many diseases which have been known for years are now called by new names. For instance, what used to be called inflammation of the bowels is now styled “appendicitis.” What was formerly simply inflammation of the lungs is now called “pneumonia.” In these degenerate days men make a great ado over ills which our forefathers met with a “grin-and-bear-it” spirit.

Beware of diseased pets; for, according to the Marquise de Fontenoy, Lady Sybil Primrose, the daughter of Lord Rosebery, is at present “suffering from a serious disfigurement in the form of a species of skin disease, which she is understood to have taken from a cat, which she was in the habit of fondling and holding to her cheek, and which now turns out to have been suffering from some catching and virulent skin malady.” Her sister, Lady Crewe, is also seriously ill with the same malady.

The reason why you do not enjoy good health may be due to the fact that your food does not contain enough bulk. Concentrated foods satisfy before they fill, and are therefore to be avoided, or at least supplemented with coarser foods, such as vegetables. Some horses were once being carried across the ocean. Those in charge of the ship had forgotten to take along sufficient hay, and nothing but oats was left for the horses to eat. Scores of the animals died. Finally one man thought that possibly it was bulk that the horses needed in their food. Accordingly the crew were set to work sawing wood, and sawdust was mixed with the oats and fed to the animals. No more horses died.

Civilization might well be defined as that state of society in which man is the farthest removed from the necessity of physical exertion. The tendency of the age is to have machinery supplant the man unit everywhere. Still, with the great advantages of civilization are to be found corresponding disadvantages to the human race. In contrasting “the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket,” with the naked native of New Zealand, “whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an individual twentieth of a shed to sleep under,” Ralph Waldo Emerson well says: “Compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that in his aboriginal strength, the white man has lost. . . . Strike the savage with a broadax and in a day or two the flesh will unite, and heal as if you had struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. The civilized man has built a coach, but he has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial, in his mind.” The great blunder of civilization is that society has been divided into two classes of men: those who work only with their brains, and those who work only with their hands. A. J. B.