p. 11 | Open the Doors

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Apr 5, 1906

Open the Doors

ONE of the most striking and fruitful of modern discoveries in medicine is the restorative power of fresh air; and the out-of-door cure is now widely adopted for a great variety of diseases. What medicine can not do fresh air does with, rapid and astonishing effectiveness. This is another step, not in the direction of the discovery of remedies, but of a rational and normal way of life; it is as a preventive of disease even more than as a healing agent that out-of-door living assumes increasing importance in the experience of men. There is no doubt that the scourge of tuberculosis, which is a plague far more destructive than cholera or yellow fever, and nervous troubles of all kinds which sap the vitality, pervert the judgment, and blur the joy of life for multitudes of men and women, have their source or occasion chiefly in living too much indoors, and breathing the vitiated air of close, overheated rooms. Simply to throw the windows open is to invite health to come in, and to go out of doors and live is to take health by the hand. “Give me health and a day,” said Emerson, “and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.”

Dr. Johnson once declared that a sick man is a rascal. The world has been well served by sick men, and their fortitude, resolution, and mastery of pain have written some of the most inspiring chapters in the history of human achievement. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that much of the crime in

the world is due to disease; that half the misery has its root in physical infirmities; and that to the same cause is due a vast number of harsh judgments, false and depressing views of life, misconceptions of motives, and morbid wretchedness. Health is not a luxury; it is a duty. He who lives with reckless disregard of the conditions essential to health invites disease, and may, in the end, incur the guilt of suicide. Parting company with nature in overeagerness to make a fortune or a reputation involves not only the loss of one of the great resources of life, but a diminution of the vital energy, and, in many cases, the premature ending of life itself.

If living out of doors is essential to physical health, it is even more essential to moral health. A vast amount of the moral illness in the world is caused by too much indoor life; by keeping too much within ourselves, walking endlessly around the little circle of our own experience, questioning our own motives, trying to settle the problems of the universe from our own individual standpoint, and treating our personal conditions as if they were the general conditions under which all men live. These and a thousand other forms the disease of egoism takes on, and disqualifies men and women not only from exercising sound judgment and seeing things as they are, but from winning contentment, happiness, and sanity. The man who is perplexed by questions about his own fitness to discharge a duty or perform a task can not solve it by thinking about it; let him set his hand to the work, put his strength in it, and he will soon discover whether he has blundered or not. And a multitude of people who are allowing their thoughts to brood continuously over their own misfortunes would find a great lifting of the weight if they would get out of themselves. The quickest and most effective way of helping one's self is to help somebody else. When the invisible house in which every man lives begins to darken, open the windows, set the doors wide, and escape at once into the great world. The remedy for egoism is a greater interest in the affairs, fortunes, and happiness of some one else. The world is full of opportunities for getting out of doors and escaping from the prison-house of our own experience; to take the sting out of your personal misfortunes, share the misfortunes of others.—The Outlook.