A Chapter on Health

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 10, 1878

A Chapter on Health.

SOUND health is sweeter than gold. The healthy laborer, whistling at his work, enjoys life much more than the pale faced dyspeptic who rides by in his carriage. "A contented spirit is a continual feast." Health brings content; there can be no content without it. An ounce of prevention is worth ten pounds of cure; good health is very easily lost; once lost it is not easily regained. Daily care, a little trouble, doing things that can easily be done, will save you from days, weeks, perhaps months of idleness and languishing on a sick bed, and materially prolong your life.

Two-thirds of the diseases to which, especially in cities, you are subject are caused by bad air, impure water, and filth, and may be prevented by free use of pure air, pure water, and strict attendance to personal cleanliness. Says the report of the Metropolitan Board of Health for 1867: "Fresh air and pure water, constant ventilation and thorough cleansing, are natural means of preventing and destroying the causes of infection and disease." The human body throws off, by the skin and the lungs, every four hours, from three to four pounds of refuse, which is poisonous. "The excremental action through the pores of the skin (Report, 1870) covers the body with filth, which, if not removed, becomes a source of disease and contagion; and it should be removed, at least once in every twenty-four hours, and all the clothes worn during the day should be thoroughly aired during the night."

There cannot be sound health without pure air; and the air cannot be pure if it is contaminated by exhalation from the lungs. Could the breath that has been exhaled by a person in a close room be tinted with some coloring matter, and made darker in proportion to its increasing unfitness for re-inhalation, we should, in a crowded and ill-ventilated assembly, find ourselves enveloped in a dense cloud, whose visible appearance would cause us to fly from a danger so apparent. Bear in mind that each breath you exhale contaminates a cubit foot of air, which must be replaced by pure air, or else you re-inhale the exhaled air and poison the blood. It is at night, in sleeping apartments, that the system receives its greatest detriment from impure air, for it is then that the blood lays in its extra store for the day's consumption.

"Suffocation in the foul air of an unventilated tenement" is the provoking cause of many a death. Says the Metropolitan Board of Health, 1867: "The fact is becoming every month more apparent that fully one-half of the acute diseases of the lungs, and much more than half of the deaths by congestion of the lungs, and bronchitis in New York, are chargeable to the foul and stagnant atmosphere of the unventilated, improperly heated rooms in which the great majority of the people spend their days and nights. Upon no subject is popular information and common sense more needed than in regard to the purity and amount of the air which human beings should have every minute in the twenty-four hours." The sun, especially the morning sun, is a great life-giver. The experience of patients in hospitals is, that those on the sunny side of the wards stand a better chance for recovery than the others in every way, whether in cases of ordinary sickness or of pestilence, or of wounds and surgical operations.

After securing pure air, pure water, and general cleanliness, the next thing is wholesome food. Do not buy stale fish or vegetables of the huckster because they are cheap; such food is dear if obtained for nothing. There is no excuse for buying them, so long as a person can thrive on oatmeal, barley, and unsifted wheat. Take as much sleep as you want; it is "the foster nurse of nature." Do not keep steadily in pursuit of health, disciplining yourselves with dumb bells, New Zealand clubs, sandbags, and other athletic exercises. Not every man is born to be a pugilist; do things in moderation; and do not cultivate one part of your body at the expense of the rest. Keep your finger off your pulse; do not carry a pocket looking glass to examine your tongue by. Forget that you have such things as stomach, liver, kidneys, pulse; they will be all the better for it and so will you. Oftentimes, when you feel oppressed, taking good long breaths of air, through your nostrils, will relieve you—it is something like a blower to the furnace, starts the fire afresh, and blows out the flues. The healthy man is contented, happy with little; the sick man—all the riches in the world will not make him a happy man, or prevent his envying the robust, rugged urchin of the streets.—Turf, Field and Farm.