What Kept Them Alive by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 29, 1885

What Kept Them Alive.

By Editor

"WHY did the survivors survive?" This question was addressed by a friend of the Companion to Sergeant Fredericks, one of the six men of the Greely expedition who lived to return home. He had just been to visit his family and friends in Ohio, and looked the ideal survivor, ruddy and robust, packed full of muscle.

He looked puzzled at the question, and so our friend explained a little.

"What I mean," said the questioner, "is this. There were twenty-five of you, all picked men, and you were all subjected to the same hardships. You had about an equal chance for your lives. Why were you six the survivors?"

The sergeant sat silent, as if thinking the matter over. Then he said, "It was our minds that did it. We kept up our spirits. We wouldn't give in, but kept talking and telling cheerful stories, and making believe that we had no doubt about our rescue."

That was a very good account of the matter so far as it went, but it did not explain why those six were better able than the rest to keep up their spirits. A few days later, the same friend had the great pleasure of conversing with Major Greely himself, to whom he proposed a similar question.

"What kept you up, Major Greely?" (He is major by brevet, and army etiquette requires that he should be called by his brevet title.)

"You are not stronger than the other men, and you had already seen a good deal of hard service. Why did you pull through, when stronger men gave out?"

The answer of Major Greely in substance was this: "It was the feeling of responsibility that sustained me. I felt that I had to live, anyhow. I felt that I must stand by the men and fulfil the object of the expedition. A hundred times I should have been glad to die, so acute were my sufferings, but in fact I had too many things to attend to."

This was Major Greely's view of the matter. Some days later, our friend read in the Boston Journal another explanation, much more simple if less romantic.

"Of the nineteen men who perished," said the Journal, "all but one were smokers, and that one was the last to die. The survivors were non-smoking men."

The Companion would be rejoiced to be able to believe this clean-cut and highly effective statement, because we are opposed, and have been from the beginning, to the use of tobacco in all its forms. Upon referring to Major Greely, we find that the paragraph, though not exactly true, yet contains a great deal of truth.

Of the six who lived to see their country again, all were men of the most strictly temperate habits in every particular. Four of them never used tobacco. The two others would sometimes, on festive occasions, to oblige friends, smoke a cigarette or a part of a cigar. They took no tobacco with them among their private stores, and cared nothing for it.

Of the nineteen who perished, the large majority were users of tobacco, some in moderation, some to excess. The first man to die was one who had been in former years a hard drinker, and there is reason to believe that the deaths of several others were hastened by previous habits of excess.

We do not doubt that the non-smokers and non-chewers, on this expedition had a positive and very great advantage over their comrades, because tobacco acts as a stimulant upon the digestive powers, and it is the nature of stimulants first to excite, and then to weaken. The excitement is temporary; the weakening is permanent.

Every one must have noticed how uncomfortable a smoker is after dinner until he begins to smoke. The reason is that the languid digestive powers (made languid by frequent stimulation) are waiting to be roused to exertion by the accustomed stimulant. We have not the slightest doubt that men subjected to just such a trial, having to subsist upon shrimps and seal-skin, would die about in the order of the strength of their digestive organs. The sum of the matter is that all the virtues, mental and moral, tend to strengthen our hold upon life, and all the vices to lessen it.—Youth's Companion.