p. 671 | HEALTH NOTES by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 15, 1901

HEALTH NOTES.

By L. A. S.

Use Your Teeth.—The question of what to eat in order to have health is one that is bothering a great many people. There is one thing that nature teaches on this point; that is, eat something that requires chewing. You have teeth; that means that you are to chew your food. Your teeth must have exercise in order to keep healthy. Look at the rest of the animal world; do you find any other animal that lives on mush, soup, or other soft dishes? The cat and all the cat tribe chew bones; so does the dog. The squirrel cracks nuts. The cow and the horse grind hard kernels of grain and tough dried hay between their teeth. All wild animals have far better teeth than man has, and those tribes of men which are most nearly wild have far better teeth than the civilized peoples. This is simply because they exercise their teeth. Man is an animal; and there is no reason why he should be an exception to all the rest of the animal world in requiring the frequent services of a dentist. There is something wrong. Nature has made no mistake, but man has. It was intended that men should have good, sound teeth; therefore it was designed that men should chew their food; therefore the proper food for man is food that will exercise the teeth. If you are not eating this kind of food, begin a reform at once. Get back to nature; then maybe nature will get back to you. Discard your fashionable long-reciped concoctions with French names, and eat something that your grandfather fared on before civilization robbed life of its simplicity. People have been poking fun at President Roosevelt’s teeth; but his teeth are the kind that nature designed for all of us. Show me a man with big, strong teeth, and I will show you a man who is healthy. Maybe your teeth have too nearly lost their function to stand chewing very hard food; but if so, give them as much exercise as they will stand. If you would eat to live, chew your food.

Pneumonia.—The statistics of mortality for the year 1900, published by the Census Bureau, show that more people now die from pneumonia in the northern section of this country than from any other disease. Statistics covering an area extending from Michigan to the Atlantic, and south to the District of Columbia, including also many cities outside this territory, give a rate of 191.9 deaths per 100,000 people from pneumonia; while that for consumption is 190.5. As the cold season is approaching, precautions should begin to be taken against this fatal disease. It is entirely preventable if one will exercise proper precautions. An attack of pneumonia is almost always the result of carelessness. Proper protection of the body against chilling winds, and prompt measures taken upon the appearance of any symptom of pulmonary congestion, would no doubt almost do away with the mortality from this scourge. But so long as people will be careless and neglect to clothe themselves properly for cold and damp weather, or to act promptly when the first symptoms of the disease appear, the mortality from this source will continue.

To guard against pneumonia, begin by fortifying the system against the disease, by toning up the circulation. Do this by taking a cold, or cool, bath, followed by vigorous rubbing of the skin, every day. Then take pains to guard against any chilling of the surface of the chest, or of the back. Moderately cold damp weather is more dangerous than very cold dry weather. Have the lower extremities warmly clad. For the relief of congestion of the lungs apply cold wet cloths to the chest and hot fomentations to the back. Apply heat also to the feet.

A severe attack of pneumonia, if not itself fatal, amounts generally to the individual’s death warrant; for it so injures the lungs that ere long the germs of tuberculosis make their presence felt, and the victim goes rapidly down to the grave. Very many deaths from consumption are really due, primarily, to pneumonia.

Apples, says a writer in the American Mother, “should form a part of at least one meal every day, so long as they can be found in market, and should constitute one third of the quantity of canned fruit usually put up for winter use. . . . Our German analysts say that the apple contains a larger percentage of phosphorous than any other fruit or vegetable,” and this phosphorous “is admirably adapted for renewing the essential nerve matter — lecithin — for the brain and spinal cord.”

L. A. S.