Health and Temperance by Old Headache

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 23, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 17.

Health and Temperance.

By Old Headache

Old Headache Speaks.

My dear distressed members of the "Sitting-room": I have visited nearly all of you, and you know me to your sorrow; in fact, I'm ever an unwelcome guest; but you will provoke my visits. It's a law of nature that I should go where I am called. To be sure I do not afflict you all with my presence, but the vast majority of you expect, and dread my approach. Oh, I just dote on this country! I'm invited out so much. They snub me terribly in Europe, with their plain teas. Why, the average wealthy Briton would look aghast at the supper-table of the average man in America. The hot breads, pastry, sauces, and pickles! My! don't I revel also at the great hotels in our cities!

I was once remonstrating with a worthy land lady of St. Paul, when she mentioned the various desserts and courses she had each day. I said to her:—

"You wicked woman, to manufacture so many dyspeptics."

"Well, if I undertake a reform, I will lose my boarders. I know they cannot eat a tenth part placed before them; indeed, they cannot more than taste of each kind of pie and pudding, but they demand it all the same, and as no one has yet discovered a kind of 'boarding-house hash,' whereinto bits of pie, or dishes of pudding can be converted, there is great waste. All that we can do with it is to pile it up in great baskets and give it to the poor."

"Very kind," grumbled I, "to give them such stuff in lieu of good substantial food that they need." I regret exceedingly that I have to plague the children—poor dears!—as I do here, but just as soon as they are out of their mother's arms they are allowed to eat anything and everything; and in cities and towns, milk, nature's food for the young, is withheld very soon.

Indeed, I have often thought it surprising to see the lack of milk on the table as a drink at the average farm-house. Parents will say, "Our children don't like milk." Ah! their desires have grown upon what they have been fed, viz., meats, tea, coffee, pastry, sauce, cake, etc. Some children are allowed to form the habit of washing down their food with cold water. Of course the gastric juices are cooled thereby, and as their food has become moistened, mastication is unnecessary, hence little saliva is made; thus nature is ever being baffled, and I am invited.

One great cause of my advent is the bread. Now you all know that bread is the one staff of life; but, alas! most of you make it such an insufficient staff by your ignorance, that life finds from this source but a poor prop indeed. Most of you prefer (from habit) your bread too fresh, when you know it will more readily digest if a little stale. In Germany, where I seldom go, it is against the law for bakers to sell other than stale bread. Then, again, you allow your bread to get too light, and if not quite sour, it is so near it that it sours, ferments, and otherwise spoils in the stomach, instead of digesting properly.

Well, I have just visited a lady and you will not wonder why I went when I tell you what she had for dinner. Potatoes, warmed or fried in grease or pepper, beef steak, a la ditto (beef steak thus cooked is as indigestible as a piece of sole leather would be). Her bread was very strong milk-emptyings—pity she did not empty it into the pail—she finished her repast with a piece of very rich mince pie.

I have many agents on the road; they are known as "Hard," "Slight," "Catarrhal," "Awful," "Sick," "Nervous," etc. Ha! it was sadly amusing to hear "Sick" relate his past experience. Said he'd just visited a man who had always said, "'Twas all gammon about being careful with one's diet; he could eat anything and everything, and at all hours of the day. Others could, too, if they weren't so notional." At last a day of reckoning had come, and he cursed the day that he discovered he owned a stomach. "Oh," said Sick, laughing till the tears ran down his cheeks, "how he did retch and writhe in pain! Made a terrible fuss; thought sure his time had come; expect I'll have to call upon him often now, as he's never learned to deny himself."

Well, I must now hasten to dispatch "Nervous" to Mrs. A. Toady, who sat up last night till two o'clock to finish her dress. All its ruffles and furbelows are the exact counterpart of her neighbor's, Mrs. Ten Thousand. The material, of course, isn't as good, and it's ten thousand pities to put so much time, patience, yes, and nerves into such inferior cloth; but she alone must suffer my advent, which is the penalty. Now, you should all agree to eat regularly, to avoid stimulants, and to eschew dainties; use good, light, but stale yeast-bread, a reasonable amount of phosphorus, such as you get in graham bread—for man cannot live by starch alone, as has been well demonstrated—ventilate your houses, and especially your sleeping-rooms. Frozen air is not always pure, as some erroneously think.

Bathe often in a bath tub with plenty of water, thereby keeping the many pores of the skin open. If only a sponge bath is convenient, it must be more frequent. It is really shocking to hear old nurses tell of some of their patients' condition as to cleanliness. Not long since a nurse told me of being called to care for a woman some forty years of age who was in a raging fever. Said she: "I gave her a terrible sweat, then bathed her, removing a good quart of dead skin. I asked the woman when she last took a bath, and she honestly admitted that she had never bathed in her life. [A fact.] But I got her pores well open and she escaped a run of a fever." Fresh air and water are free, but it is surprising to see how many prefer physics and doctors' bills.

Avoid all excesses; be ye "temperate in all things," and my word for it I'll not molest you in the future. I have had little rest of late, as the women have been making countless mince pies, pork and greases have been unsparingly used, and who, pray tell, but suffers by this regimen? Why, even the cooks suffer, as they have to be cooped up in ill-ventilated houses, getting no outdoor exercise; hence their systems have become clogged from the hearty food that has been craved for warmth. It is not the food we eat, but that which is assimilated or digested properly that gives us strength and vigor.

But I must be off; so many are constantly transgressing nature's laws that my labors are arduous. I get no rest night nor day. Hoping not to see any of the readers of the "Sitting-room" again very soon, I remain, distressedly yours.—Old Headache, in Christian at Work.