How Doctors Avoid Disease.
"SOME men," remarked Captain Horton, "can move in the midst of pestilence and miasmata, and never seem any the worse. How, for instance, do you doctors defend your fortress?" "I'm glad you asked the question. We defend the fortress by using ordinary precautions. We will not, if possible, breathe more infected air than we can help. We will not be stupidly rash. Depend upon it, my friend, that when Dr. Abernethy kicked his foot through the pane of glass in his patient's room, because he couldn't get him to have his window down, the excellent physician was thinking as much about his own safety as that of his patient. Secondly, physicians know that they must live by rule when attending cases during a pestilence. The body must be kept up to the health standard. In times of epidemic let every one see to himself, attend to every rule of health, live regularly, and keep the stomach most carefully in order, and be abstinent. There is no other way of defending the fortress of life against invisible foes." "This living according to rule," said my friend, musingly, "is a terribly hard thing to have to do. At least, I am sure most people find it so." "Few people," I replied, "think of anything of the sort, until actual danger to life stares them in the face. Some one else, I believe, has made a remark similar to this before now, but it is worthy of being repeated." "And it is true," added Horton, "I have been thinking a good deal lately—" "Most people who are laid low do think," I said. "I have been thinking," said my friend, "that most of us err by eating more than is necessary." "How very true that is, Horton! Why, in careful regulation of diet—a diet that should incline to the abstemious—we have one of the best defenses against invisible foes of all kinds. This is one of our posts, and should be held at all risks, if we care for life at all—and not for life only, but comfort while we do exist. It is a fact which all should bear in mind, that over-eating not only corrupts the blood but destroys nervous energy."—Cassell's Family Magazine.