p. 687 | HOME AND HEALTH NOTES

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 22, 1901

HOME AND HEALTH NOTES.

Stretching is a very good means of exercise.

The perfect human form is the best fashion-plate to follow in the making of clothing.

What an improvement would be effected in the schoolrooms of the land were every teacher to become an earnest and determined physical culturist! How many acts prompted by nervousness, impatience, dyspepsia, and other physical ills, would thus be eliminated from the day’s work!

A physical-culture teacher prescribes the following remedy for weak ankles: “Adopt common-sense style of footwear, and take the following exercises twice a day barefooted: Stand erect; rise on your toes until tired, then let weight fall on heels, and lift toes from floor till tired.” Walking and hill climbing are also good remedies for ankle weakness.

It has been truthfully stated that the best mineral water is that which contains no minerals at all. If one cannot obtain pure water from nature, it is possible to turn the foulest water into the purest drink by means of a still. This useful invention may easily be procured in any part of the country, at a moderate price. Prices range, according to different makes, from $4 to $15 or $20.

In discussing “the causes of invalidism in girls,” Flora Brewster, M. D., states that “it is a sad comment upon our twentieth century civilization that there are so many girls and young women among the clientele of the gynecologists and nerve specialists. I find a very general impression that ‘the higher education of women’ is responsible for this physical degeneration.” The dread of hard physical work lies at the root of much of this evil.

It is said that the Hindus uniformly have excellent teeth. The reason given is that they are very careful and regular in the cleaning of their teeth, such cleansing being a part of their religious ritual. The process is very simple. The Hindu uses “a small twig, one end of which he softens out into the form of a painter’s brush. Squatting on his heels, and always facing either east or north, he scrubs all his teeth well with this brush, after which he rinses his mouth out with fresh water.” If all Americans did as well, Yankee dentists would have less work to do.

It is possible to cool water without ice. The process consists in “wrapping the pitcher containing it in a towel of loose texture, which has been previously impregnated with ammonium nitrate (and dried), and moistening this with water. The same towel may be used repeatedly, after being dried each time.” People in Mexico are said to keep water deliciously cool by placing it in earthen jars of porous material. Those living in India attain the same object by wrapping moist cloths about the water jars, and swinging the latter back and forth, suspended by cords.

Those who live where “chiggers” or “jiggers” abound will do well to rid themselves of those pests by carrying out the following instructions furnished by an exchange: “Take a homeopathic vial, and stuff it with absorbent cotton; then saturate the cotton with chloroform; cork it tightly until needed. Then apply the mouth of the bottle tightly over the point of irritation (chigger) for one or two minutes, then proceed to the next. The relief is immediate, and the chigger dies a painless death.” Those who have had experience state that the chigger runs away.

One of our exchanges informs us that “the Turkish authorities have, within the past year, arranged for the sinking of a large number of wells along the historic pilgrimage route to Mecca, and are providing them with windmills. In this way it is believed that the hardships of the annual pilgrimage can be lessened, and the pilgrims kept in reasonably good health. The sickness of former years has been almost entirely due to the impure water along the route.” With these improvements a journey to Mecca may do one fully as much good as one to Saratoga Springs, N. Y., or any other popular watering place.

Field sports and athletic games have been made an important factor in the treatment of patients at the Manhattan Hospital for the insane, Ward’s Island, New York. The inmates enter into these sports and contests with great zest. They have their daily plunge in the swimming-pool, baseball games, swimming races, tugs-of-war, high and broad jumping contests, etc., and do “all kinds of light garden work, pulling up weeds, tending the flowers, running the lawnmowers,” etc. The managers of the institution consider outdoor exercises and pleasures to be far more beneficial to the patients than the “padded cell” or the “straight jacket.”