The Health Habit by Maria L. Edwards, M.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 1, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 47.

The Health Habit

By Maria L. Edwards, M.D.

Article I

By Maria L. Edwards, M.D.

Certainly there is not a single individual whose eyes shall read these lines, but that will appreciate the truthfulness of the statement that health is the most DESIRABLE and the most ESSENTIAL of all earthly blessings,—desirable because of the bodily comfort and mental cheer that accompany it, essential because of the unlimited possibilities that are open to the possessor of good health, while without it there are always restricted possibilities, more or less suffering, and endless inconvenience.

We are said to be creatures of habit, and doubtless different experiences of each one have convinced him of the fact; and it is just as possible to form habits of health or habits of sickness, and as proper so to designate them as it is to speak of habits of thought or muscular action.

Habit is defined as “aptitude gained by practice,” without restricting that aptitude to any set of organs or functions. Habit is not formed by once or even twice doing a certain way, but by repeatedly and regularly performing an act or following a certain course. A man who went swimming, or had an attack of pneumonia, but once, could not be said to have formed the habit of going swimming or being sick; but if he should go once a week or even once a month, we could truthfully say that he had the habit of going swimming; or if he contracted pneumonia every winter, he would not hesitate to tell the doctor that he had the pneumonia habit every winter.

Bad habits always, for some reason, seem easier to acquire than good ones; and for that reason, doubtless, our mothers used to teach us this little rhyme:

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with its face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

They meant by this to warn us that an undesirable, even a hated habit could readily and almost unconsciously be acquired by us.

Habits of virtue accompany a virtuous character, while habits of vice accompany a vicious character. Just so habitual compliance with the laws of health, as written in our members, produces the habit of health, while repeated violation of the laws of health produces the habit of disease. But when we stop to consider, we are sure that all have physically sinned (violated nature’s laws) and come short of perfect health, just as Paul says of our spiritual life, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

I recall a group of children from seven to nine years of age, myself one of them, who were once comparing notes as to the particular trouble of which each one’s mother complained. One child reported the headache habit, another a stomach that refused to do its work, a third a pain and drawing in the back of the neck, and so on; but what most impressed me at the time was the readiness and the accuracy with which each report was given, showing that the particular habit of sickness was well understood even by the younger members of each family. In later years and with riper experience I have found that the members of any group of similar size can as readily point out the complaint or physiological habit that bars from them the much-coveted condition called health.

Back of each complaint there is somewhere a cause; or in other words, back of each wrong habit that any of our bodily members have formed, there has been a physical wrong-doing.

To illustrate: Back of the tobacco heart has been a long and continuous practice of tobacco-using; back of the poor little deformed feet seen in China, has been the painful process of bandaging, extending over a period of years; back of the drug habit or the physical dependence upon drugs, is the habit of taking drugs. And so we might go through the list; but back of any physical condition there has been a time when the forks in our path started us on the road that has led to the habit. The practise of staying awake, whether for pleasure, financial gain, or for pain, during the hours that are intended by nature for sleep, produces the physical habit called insomnia, which is both trying and very difficult to overcome. The prolonged use of peppers and hot spices from which the stomach defends itself by pouring out a quantity of mucus, precedes the physical habit that is termed, catarrh of the stomach.

If we could come to consider the headache, the sour stomach, the nervous irritability, etc., as indications that we have gone astray from the path of physical rectitude which it is necessary for us to follow in order to be in perfect health, then could we more readily and more cheerfully shun these pitfalls in the future.