POINTED PARAGRAPHS ON HEALTH.
By David Paulson
The person who wishes to maintain the brilliancy of the eye, the clearness of the skin, and the vigor which is so characteristic of youth, must take an abundance of outdoor exercise. Mold never grows on the apple while it is hanging upon the tree, nor does moss flourish on the fresh young bark of the tree, nor does slime gather in an artesian well. Just so with the human organism; it must be trampled upon and weakened, and its resistance lowered by wrong habits of living, before the germs of disease can secure a permanent foothold. The membrane which separates the air from the blood in the lungs is so thin that it requires twenty of these layers, placed one on another, to equal the thickness of a sheet of ordinary writing paper. What a horror we should have of breathing tobacco smoke and foul gases with only this thin lining to prevent their being carried to the very brain! If children knew half as much about what they ought to put into their stomachs as they do about the specific gravity of the Dead Sea, or some other sea, or the height of Pike’s Peak, more than half their diseases would disappear. What we eat and the state of our digestion determine, to a large degree, what we are and the amount of power we will wield in the world. The body is fed, renovated, and nourished, almost entirely by the blood; therefore the actual condition of any part of the body depends almost wholly upon the character of the blood. How strange it is that people imagine that the human system possesses the power to make clean, pure blood out of such unnatural mixtures as are commonly found on our tables! The natural food elements of the earth, prepared in a simple healthful manner, without the addition of such blistering substances as spices, and without being smeared with grease, tend to produce, when eaten properly and at appropriate intervals, a healthy and pure condition of the blood. Fluids are very important for the maintenance of every function of the body, and should be supplied in abundance, but at other times than at meals. Always remember that pure water is the best liquid that can be secured. If we will constantly eat the things that are good for us, by and by they will taste good; for nature has put an individual flavor into every food. Vicious eating and drinking are the stern and unrelenting parents of four trying children,—Bright’s disease, diabetes, rheumatism, and gout; and as sometimes the children of the same family do not bear any striking resemblance to each other, so these diseases seem to be very different in their manifestations, yet the identical causes give birth to the whole quartet. The man who wishes to avoid these diseases had better pour his tea and coffee into the gutter, bury dead animals in the graveyard instead of his stomach, deal his “bread to the hungry,” instead of eating too much of it himself, and take sufficient exercise daily to produce perspiration.