p. 20 | A Senate Health Talk by L. A. H.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 2, 1914

A Senate Health Talk

By L. A. H.

THE United States Senate was recently given the benefit of a talk on health by Senator Benjamin R. Tillman. The occasion was the presentation of a resolution prohibiting smoking in the Senate chamber at any time. The custom has been for those who smoke to do so during executive sessions. The following is a portion of Senator Tillman's remarks, as reported in the Congressional Record of March 9:—

"Since my illness four years ago I have learned more about the human body than during the balance of my life put together, and I am sure that I have discovered some of the secrets of nature and laws of health of which most men know nothing whatever. The pity of it is that I had to ruin my health before I discovered these things and learned how to live rationally. Had I lived ten years ago as I am doing now, my health never would have broken down at all.

"I believe I would lengthen the life of every man in this chamber from six to fifteen years if I could only get the men to believe what I tell them and follow my advice. But all men are prone to consider 'old age, sickness, death, and hell' as for other people and not for themselves. To give advice is the easiest thing in the world.

"I owe what degree of recovery I have made—and I am constantly being told I look a great deal better, and I know it is so—to will power, and self-control in eating, the will power to exercise my muscles and nerves sufficiently to give them tone and keep the rust out of the joints. But the greatest help to my health arises from the self-control which enables me to keep from eating things I ought not to.

"Since I was paralyzed four years ago, and read my own obituary, twenty-one senators, including Vice-President Sherman, most of them younger than I, have died. No wonder, as I look around the chamber and see the changes that have come, and miss many old familiar faces, I feel as if I were serving with ghosts as well as living men.

"There is no doubt in the world to my mind that this great mortality among us is due to the way we live in Washington. The life here is indeed an arduous one; the mental strain is immense. There is a continuous succession of banquets, dinners, and receptions. Automobiles and street cars are used by senators instead of walking, and pure air and sunshine are things of which we get too little. There is no surer way to undermine the health than by eating too much or by eating irregularly. All these explain the unusual mortality among the members of Congress.

"A fitting epitaph for most of the senators who have died in service would be, 'He lived not wisely, but too well, and killed himself by eating.' Indeed, that can be said about most men and women in official life in Washington.

"There is nothing more deadly than to breathe air that has already been breathed by others, and thus robbed of its oxygen, besides being poisoned in other ways. The ventilation of this chamber is poor, as every one knows; and when we increase its impurities by tobacco smoke, as is being done all the while, the air is never cleansed, and is very unwholesome and unhealthful.

"Let us stop this smoking in the Senate chamber, and have the attendants open the gallery doors every night, as well as prop open the Senate doors, and have the windows leading to the open air outside opened all night, so that pure air can come into the chamber and wash it out and make it habitable and more healthful, and there will be fewer deaths among us."

In the Congressional Record of March 17 appears an article by Senator Tillman on the benefits of physical culture and the general care of the health. Announcement is made that the matter given in both numbers of the Record will be available in printed form to those desiring it. Address, Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, Washington, D. C.

L. A. H.