Is It Good to Be Afflicted?
By D. H. Kress, M.D.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES7once said, "One of the necessary requisites for attaining to a good old age is to be rejected for life insurance by a first-class company." In studying the life history of men who have been blessed with long life, we are led to believe that Dr. Holmes was not far astray. In many instances long life may be attributed to physical illness in early manhood. For instance, Louis Carnaro, the famous centenarian, was given up by his doctors at the age of forty. This, it is said, sobered him, and led him to adopt temperate habits. He became so abstemious in his diet that his friends feared and predicted he would die of starvation, but instead of this he managed to get rid of all his ills, and live to the advanced age of about one hundred years and retained the full possession of all his mental faculties. His power of enjoying life increased with age. John Wesley, who at eighty-three wrote, "For twelve years I have not known what it is to be weary," at the age of forty was given up as a hopeless invalid. Wesley lived a most temperate life. In 1747, in a letter to a bishop, he said, "Thanks be to God, since I gave up the use of wine and meat I have been delivered from all physical ills." He wrote a treatise against the use of tea, and advised, and, in fact, demanded all his ministers to live in a simple manner. Horace Fletcher, who has called the attention of the world to the need of thorough mastication of food, owes his present good health to the fact that ten years ago he was rejected by a first-class life insurance company. This led him to study the requirements of the human body and the laws upon which its existence and health depend, and induced him to change his manner of living. Delicate health in middle life does not preclude the possibility of a long and useful life; on the contrary, it seems to have just the opposite effect, and offers hope for the invalid who is determined to search out and remove the causes of invalidism. David the psalmist, after his affliction, could say, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes." "Before I was afflicted I went astray." It is the strong and robust, those who imagine they can endure anything and eat anything, and who affirm, "Nothing hurts me," that do not live out half their days. Their vital organs are overcrowded, stimulated, and overworked, as a result they may put on weight, have flushed faces, and have all the appearance of health, but sooner or later the organs which have been urged on by the use of irritants, condiments, and stimulants, become exhausted and can no longer be whipped into activity. The tissues of the body, being filled with impurities or substances which can not be utilized for useful purposes, are degenerate and lacking in vitality. Apoplexy, heart failure, or Bright's disease usually claims such at the age of fifty or sixty. Should those who have robust health at thirty or forty practise the same temperance that those who have weakly constitutions at that age are forced to practise, there is no reason why they might not in many instances enjoy life to the age of one hundred or one hundred and twenty. But as it is, those who at an early age learn obedience thru affliction outlive those whose chances for a long and useful life are much better.