Health by Joseph Clarke

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 11, 1858

Health

By Joseph Clarke

Of body and mind is indispensable to usefulness and happiness in every calling of life. When one is out of health, his prospects are clouded and gloomy. A useless, painful existence is burdensome to the sufferer, and any approach to ill health, as headaches, nervousness, palpitation of the heart, chronic complaints, with all the train of evils and mental suffering consequent, are a bar and hindrance to usefulness and happiness.

When the body is deranged, the mind sympathizes with it in a greater or less degree, and thus unfits the individual to serve God or man acceptably. A person suffering from nervousness will often start at the rustling of a leaf, and the evil passions are often ungovernable in such a person, and a peevish fretfulness is manifested even in those who in health are mild and equable.

The person suffering from chronic diseases is sure to be low spirited. Nothing goes right. Most devoted friends are often viewed with distrust, and dependants are sometimes treated with cruelty, and equals with coldness. The organs of life are deranged, so is the mind. Satan takes advantage of such, and gains an easy victory. A person crippled by ill health, is entirely unfitted to grapple with difficulty, to oppose the tide of evil which the tempter often turns upon the mind, right reason cannot be vigorously exercised. Everything is seen through a perverted, distorted vision, and too often the mind gives place to Satan. Then comes the hour of darkness and trial to the saint, and little does he imagine that ill health is the cause of his troubles of mind. The physical and mental powers being weakened, the flood gates of temptation are thrown open, and a miracle must be performed to enable him to preserve cheerfulness and equanimity. But worse than all, is the fact, that generally the cause of all ill health is laid in carelessness, or rashness, or ignorance, or intemperance, or willful sin.

Diseases have a cause and a remedy; and to understand the remedy without knowing the cause, is as useless as to know the cause without using the remedy. Both should be understood or disease will perpetuate itself, and for this we need not wade through the materia medica nor consult the learned.

The exercise of common sense and judgment, and care in eating and drinking, and fasting at proper intervals, with regular out-door exercise, is better than the best medical aid. A breakfast of water gruel will often quiet the most obstinate toothache or headache. A fast of forty-eight hours in the first stage of disease, is better than a council of Doctors afterwards. The best exercise for females is walking with good serviceable shoes on, every day, cold or hot, dry or wet. They should wear more woolens, less cottons and silks. Most men labor too hard and too steadily, they never get wholly rested, and the overworked body drops into the grave prematurely. Some are slothful and rust out.

Some work by fits and starts, and thus injure the muscular powers. Some are injudicious and intemperate, though not gluttonous or drunken. Some tax the mental powers in study or other literary pursuits, until a late hour at night, and then wonder that sleep is denied, until health and reason fail. Literary men should retire to bed early, and perform their most arduous duties before 10 o'clock A. M. Plain, coarse food at regular intervals, regular rest and exercise, habits of temperance in all things, regard to God's revealed and natural laws, would prevent a vast amount of sickness and ill health, and consequent misery, poverty, and sin.

A person in vigorous health has a corresponding flow of cheerfulness and courage, is more agreeable, looks better, acts better, feels better, vastly better than when pain and sickness rack the frame; and can perform a far greater amount of labor, and do infinitely more good, with positive pleasure and ease; and he who wishes to be useful to his fellow men, and to glorify God, should take the greatest pains to gain and preserve this priceless blessing.

That sickness is often sent as a chastisement, read 1 Cor. xi, 30, also Deut. xxviii, 59.

JOSEPH CLARKE.