Camp-Meeting Hygiene by Dr. Ginley

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 11, 1872

Camp-Meeting Hygiene.

By Dr. Ginley

It is a serious fact that there has been much needless sickness at these yearly gatherings, and much valuable time and knowledge been consequently lost. In these sudden paroxysms much excitement prevails which distracts the minds of ministers and people and wholly unfits them for the duties of the meeting.

There are no valid reasons why people should be sick while in camp for a single week, more than while at home, providing the proper sanitary regulations are carried out.

In locating the camp-ground, care should be taken to have the grounds high and dry as may be, with a southern slope if possible, contiguous to a running stream or spring of water.

Should no soft water be obtainable, the hard water should be boiled before using for drinking or cooking, as by boiling, the lime and other impurities are precipitated to the bottom or sides of the kettles. This precaution should be taken; for hard water alone may cause much of camp sickness by closing up the pores of the skin. To make the water quite soft, boil a quart of wheat bran, tied in a rag, with two pails of water for an hour or more, and set it away to cool until needed.

In selecting the grounds for tents, they should slope if possible to the north, which will prevent in a measure the waste from decomposition for a longer time, and these grounds should be located so that the winds will not blow to any extent toward the camping grounds.

A common yet reprehensible practice is to throw out large quantities of moldy and refuse food with other wastes just in the rear of the tents, which soon causes a disgusting sight and smell, and is a fruitful source of disease at night!

If we add to this a company of from 30 to 60 sleepers in the tent, exhaling barrels of carbonic acid night after night, it will be a miracle indeed if some are not stricken down with disease before the week is over. This can all be prevented by burning, burying, or otherwise disposing of the wastes thrown out; and a small quantity of carbolic acid in vessels set in various parts of the tents, is one of the best disinfectants known.

Great mistakes are made in preparing for these meetings by over-crowding work, increasing each day up to the hour of departure. In this condition the nervous system is strung up to its highest tension, and on reaching the camp-grounds persons feel exhausted. A comparatively inactive state of the muscles induces a lowering of the vital forces. The mind becomes dull, and several days elapse before the mind can be fully aroused to the importance of the time and place.

This is why so many are found dull and sleepy at Sabbath meetings. Both mind and body are wrought up during the week, even to the very commencement of the Sabbath; and the sudden dropping off from labor induces stiffness of the body and dullness of intellect.

All should have their hardest work done by noon of the sixth day of the week, ending with the lighter work. This would afford comparative rest, and enable us to have clear minds to grasp and comprehend more clearly spiritual things, and the object for which we were created.

Our habits of eating in camp is a source of evil. From a life of excessive activity and hearty eating, we suddenly drop to a life of bodily inactivity, making little or no change in our food or eating. This tends to induce gastric fevers, digestive disorders, and nervous paroxysms. These periodical disorders frighten many into sickness of various grades, who otherwise would have remained well. These mental hallucinations run from tent to tent at the cry of friends in search of doctors A, B, or C. At such seasons there is not nearly the amount of food needed as while we are at work in manual labor, neither should it be as concentrated as when at hard labor. The food should be properly cooked. Cold food should be avoided as much as possible, as it will not easily digest under 100°, and if much cold food is taken, the blood is drawn from the capillaries to the stomach, thus turning our stomachs into warming pans, the blood being called upon to act as fuel to heat our food, while outer parts are left without power to resist the changes of the weather. In this condition we are liable to colds, catarrh, cholera morbus, diarrhœa, and other diseases of greater or lesser magnitude.

If, as some physiologists say, it is a sin to be sick, it is doubly so upon the camp-grounds (all contingencies set aside). Of all places where we need clear heads and sound judgments, it is when we come before the Author of our being. But how can we do this while our stomachs are clogged with unsuitable food, and our minds befogged by fits of indigestion?

All should know that in febrile diseases, whether gastric or synochal, there is little or no gastric juice secreted; hence the importance of withholding food from the stomach in these complaints until nature makes a call, but give in place plenty of cold water, and patiently wait until nature makes a demand for food.

As in diet, so in regard to clothing. Much care is needed. While at rest, the body needs more clothing than when in motion; and at night, than during the day; and while asleep, than when awake. Therefore at evening meetings the linen coat of the day should be exchanged even for the overcoat, if need be, to protect the body from dews and the chilling air of evening which induce cramps, colics, agues, &c., &c.

I throw out these few practical hints, hoping that due caution may be used by those for whom they are intended, and they may thus prevent sickness and obtain the greatest amount of spiritual good possible, while at these yearly gatherings.

DR. GINLEY.

Health Institute, B. C., Mich.