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 Health and how to promote it; 
 
 olin.anx 
 
 3 1924 031 255 353 
 
HEALTH, 
 
 HOW TO PROMOTE IT, 
 
 FROM INFANCY TO ADVANCED AGE. 
 
 KIOHAED ^McSHEREY, M. D., 
 
 PROFESSOK OF PRINCIPLES AND PHACTICB OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OP MARY- 
 LAND ; PRESIDENT OF THE MEDICAL AND CHIRURGICAL FACULTY OF MARY- 
 LAND ; MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION ; MEMBER AND 
 EX-PRESIDENT OF THE BALTIMORE ACADEMY OF MEDICINE, ETC. ; 
 AUTHOR OF "el PUCHERO ; OR A MIXED DISH FROM MEXICO ; " 
 "LECTURES AND ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS ; " "EARLY 
 HISTORY OP MARYLAND, MEXICO, AND MEXICAN AF- 
 FAIRS ; " "HEALTH AND HAPPINESS," ETC. 
 
 ' Vaisamx et les donnes mamrs sont les meilleurs auxUiaires de Vhyfiine." 
 
 — BOUCHAiiDAT. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 NEW YOKK: 
 
 D. APPLETOK AND COMPANY, 
 1, 3, ASD 6 BOND STREET. 
 
 1384. 
 
UN!VEf?S2TY 
 LIBRARY' '^ 
 
 COPTMGHT BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 1879. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 Hygiene, public and private, has become, of late years, 
 one of the most important elements of modern civilization. 
 It is a subject in which all mankind has an interest, even if 
 it be, as it too often is, an unconscious interest. The life of 
 every man, woman, and child, ought to be guided and gov- 
 erned by its laws. This being so, the subject ought to be 
 presented and agitated ia many forms, so that its impor- 
 tance shall be everywhere appreciated. Physicians and 
 their patients are equally interested in it, for the success 
 of physic wUl be vastly greater wherever hygiene is under- 
 stood. 
 
 In the following pages the author proposes to du-ect 
 attention principally, almost entirely, to personal matters 
 under individual control ; that is, to what each individual 
 may do for himself, or what paterfamilias, or his wife 
 (incedit regina), vaaj do for the household. 
 
 Public hygiene, or what should be done by communi- 
 ties. States, or cities, the author leaves to such eminent 
 scientists as Mr. Chadwick, Dr. Bowditch, Dr. Bell, of The 
 Sanitarian, and others, and to such associations as the 
 American Medical, Public Health, Medico-Legal, of New 
 York, etc., whose united efforts will bring within a few 
 years incalculable good to the whole civilized world. 
 
iv PKEPACE. 
 
 The present work is addressed to the general reader, no 
 matter what his pursuit, and the language is such as any 
 physician may use in conversation with an intelligent pa- 
 tient ; it is therefore as free as such a work can be made 
 from scientific technicalities. It is intended to be rather 
 suggestive than didactic, dealing rather in principles than 
 in minute details ; for the last must always be modified by 
 existing conditions, which will vary more or less with every 
 individual, or in every household. 
 
 It is offered as a contribution to a great cause, and the 
 writer trusts that it will have some influence in promoting 
 the health, happiness, and welfare of all who may honor 
 it with a careful perusal. The principles advocated have 
 been, to a great extent, put in practice in the personal 
 experience of the writer in various parts of the world, and 
 under many vicissitudes, and he has found them to be 
 not vague theories, but practical truths of the greatest 
 importance. 
 
 He begs the reader to pardon the defects of the work, 
 while he accepts the truths therein, which, reduced to prac- 
 tice, will greatly contribute to ease the burdens borne by 
 each and every one of us, from the beginning to the end, 
 more or less, of the mortal career. 
 
 R. McS. 
 
 Baltimoee, August, 1878. 
 
0Ol^TE]5TTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Intkodtjotokt Eemaeks. Hygiene the Better Paet of 
 
 Medicine ..... pp. 1-13 
 
 The aims of medicine. The natural term of life. Seventy, eighty, or ninety years. 
 Casualties. The vision of Mirza. Trap-doors and pitfalls. A long life or a good 
 one. Dv/m. vivimus, vivamits. The doctor of medicine and the doctor of di- 
 vinity. Suicide, direct and indirect. The temperance of Epicurus. Human 
 happiness depends upon health, physical and moral. Pure enjoyment. The Bea^ 
 the springs, the mountains. Health, spirits, and temper, exhausted in the cities. 
 Benovation in pare air. Destitution and exposure impairing mind and body. 
 Elixir of life dispensed by mountain nymphs. Worship of Hygeia better than 
 worship of Mammon. Blue devils put to flight by milk-diet. Comaro''s good 
 stomach and good humor. Methodical habits of life. Keeping on the course. 
 Avoiding pitfalls. Medicine involves prevention as well as cure of disease. 
 Medicines for the fishes. Total exemption from disease unattainable. Enoeh, 
 forever. Sanitary science the great study of the day. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Four Divisions of Human Life , . pp. 14-51 
 
 According to Pythagoras: The first score of years— infancy, childhood, youth. 
 The second score of years— the young man. The third score of years — the man. 
 The fourth score of years— the declining or old man. 
 
 The First Quarter, oe the First Score of Years. 
 
 Seotton 1. Infant lAfe. — The supplies. The bath. The cry of temper, of pain. 
 Injudicious exposure. On all-fours. The diet and the teeth. Milk. Meigs and 
 Pepper on milk. Clothes to be changed according to temperature. Ventilating 
 the nursery. Fatal diseases fVom foul air. Cholera infantum. Sensitiveness of 
 young subjects. Care out-of-doora, in regard to cold and to heat. Nutrition. 
 Qualities of milk and bread. All elements of food in milk, Tariety in food 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 allowed. Fruits. Superfluous food. Tea, coffee, wine, beer, and liquors, objec- 
 tionable. Food too strong or rich. Cleanliness of clothes, of bedding, of person. 
 Baths of pleasant temperature. Flaying on the sward. 
 
 BiflCTiCN" 2. Intellectual omd Moral Training. — Early education. Education by 
 inheritance. With or without books. From example. Children close observers. 
 Walking in the footsteps. Checks and restraints. No imaginary terrors allowed. 
 Too much exaction. Counsels from Fenelon. Simple pleasures. Companion- 
 ship between mother and child. 
 
 Skotion 8. Kindergarten. — ^Infant prodigies of little promise. Physical growth 
 not to be wasted by labor of thinking. A well-ordered Kindergarten a proper 
 school. 
 
 Section 4. CJiildhood. — Sayings of Aristotle. Climacterics. BeTen-year terms. 
 Mortahty of first seven years. Schoolboys and schoolgirls. Elementary edu- 
 cation. Edward Everett's views. Precocity. Cramming. A French caricature. 
 Girls quicker to learn and more docile than boys. Often injured thereby. Recre- 
 ation urged. Roger Ascham's opinions. Boys do not die of hard study. Waste 
 of time in schoolroom. Mr. Chadwick's investigations. Advantages of diversity 
 between mental and physical occupation. Physique of children exhausted by 
 excess of bodily or mental work. 
 
 Section 5. Youth. Progreaavve Education. — ^For boys. For young ladies. 
 The mental faculties. The moral faculties. Self-culture based on primaiy 
 education. Special education. Everybody to be educated. But not a nation 
 of scholars. Bad farming in Laputa. Thinkers and workers. Athenian edu- 
 cation. Age of gymnastics. Violent exercise unnecessary. Dr. Ailbutt on 
 brain-forcing. Control and restraint. Education of young ladies not to be the 
 same as for the male sex. InteUectual competition not productive of good results. 
 Failure of republic of women. Calisthenics, and a palfrey. Prof. Clarke on sex 
 in education. Coeducation intellectually a success, physically a failure. Dr. 
 Nathan Allen's vital statistics. Impairment of stamina. Causes. Transmission 
 of neuroses. Wealth of bone and blood required. Jersey City High-School. 
 High-pressure system of culture. Penalties. Education to give dignity and im- 
 portance to female character. 
 
 Section 6. 77*6 Safioolhouse. — Inspections needed. Light, ventilation, warming. 
 Maryland State Normal School. To let.fresh air in and foul air out. Dr. Bell on 
 schoolroom stunting. Intelligence and mental faculties Impaired by foul air. 
 Hot-house plants. Temperature adjusted to the season and to the day. Pas- 
 sive exposure to cold intolerable. Appendages to schoolroom. Play-grounds. 
 From school to college, farnd, or workshop. Consumption starting in the school- 
 room. 
 
 Section 7. Plmfsical Micerciae. — Physical exercise. Preferably out-of-doors. No 
 violent exertion. Dr.-Bowditch's correspondence with college presidents. Ex- 
 ercise promotes manly carriage and womanly grace. Letters (rephes) from 
 oflQccrs of United States Naval Academy and Virginia Military Institute. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Young Man. The Young Woman . . pp. 52-61 
 
 Section 1. Hie Young itfim.— The commencement day; Pleasures. Cares. 
 Manly development. Education bwught into use. Occupation. The physician. 
 Mechanical Pursuits. The printer. Slaves of civilization. Nece^ity of occu- 
 
CONTENTS. vii 
 
 pation. Overwork. Paying too high for a fortune. Alternate labor and rest. 
 Temptations. Dangers. Early marriage conservative. Hufeland on the passion 
 of love. To he well directed. Alcohol. An insidious enemy. Illustrative case. 
 Human wrecks. Treating and being treated. Mind and body to be kept in 
 action. Wit and wisdom. Steady industry. 
 Section 2. Tlie Young Woman, — A peeress — the central figure of the domestic 
 circle. Duties and qualifications. Great men always sons of superior women. 
 Fitted in maturity for great duties. Too much society, or too much drudgery. 
 Represented in her children. She may be bread-winner. She ought to be the 
 valiant woman. 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 The Mais\ The Woman .... pp. 62-68 
 
 Section 1. The J/tra.— In his prime. On an even keel. Passions lively, but 
 under control. Mens conscia recti. Earning competence. Seven days in the 
 week. Sunday savings-bank. Vicissitudes of fortune. The man a good worker, 
 not a slave to gain. 
 
 Section 2. The Woman. — "Wife. Matron. Character formed. Order in the 
 household. Arrangement of time. Care of her health. Age deretour. Tilt 
 on important changes. Conservatism of a well-ordered life. Extreme condi- 
 tions. Trials. Endurance. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 The Deolintng oe Old Man . . • PP« 69-84 
 
 Cato's opinion. Bodily powers failing before mental powers. Highest faculties in 
 operation. Seventy years and onward. Elderly man inactive, but not unem- 
 ployed. Moves carefiilly. He becomes earthy. The tripod of life damaged. 
 Less subject to acute diseases. Must not be exposed to severe cold or vicissi- 
 tudes. Homeward bound. Accommodates himself to his condition. The use 
 of artificial teeth. Suitable food. Overthrow of the Duke of "Wellington. A 
 frosty but kindly winter, Eules for hurrying through life. Eatty degenerations. 
 Induration. Softening of tissues. Elderly man to move in grooves. Keeupera- 
 tion difl&cult. Prof Bain on improved judgment. Age of reason. Not that of 
 the French philosophers. Growing old gracefully. Regular habits. Use of 
 wine. Temperature of apartments. Gradual changes. Intestinal torpor. Cer- 
 tain functions to be aided. Clothing. Woolen or linen. Protecting the chest. 
 Feet warm and head cool, with conditions. Mr. Bryant, his habits of life. Suit- 
 able employment always necessary. 
 
yiii CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II.— HYGIENICS IN SOME DETAIL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Race, Tempeeaments, and Idiostnckasies. Inhekitanob. 
 
 Habit. OoNSTiTtiTioir . . ■ PP- 85-92 
 
 Seotion 1. Temperament and /(Jiosyjtcrasies.— Temperaments acknowledged, 
 but indefinite. Elements supposed to temper each other. Idiosyncrasy or indi- 
 vidual peculiarities. 
 
 Section 2. /7iAer«a»<;«.— Tendencies transmitted in families. Intermarriage of 
 disease. Near relatives should not intermarry. Cancer and consumption. 
 
 Section 8. .ffa6«.— System desirable. Not too rigid. Requires discretion. Bad 
 habits. Idleness. Recreation. 
 
 Section 4. OonsUtuHon.—A. good constitution. Physical excellence. Many 
 advantages. A single drawback. Individual and family defects. Protection 
 given by medicma conservativa. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Aik we beeathe. Sewers and Cesspools. Ozoite. 
 Malaria. Animal Emanations. Devitalized House- 
 AiE pp. 93-109 
 
 Section 1. The Air we Jrca^/ie.— Atmospheric air diluted oxygen. Oxygen, 
 nitrogeo, hydrogen, carbon. Feeders of organic life. Air entering and leaving 
 the lungs. Pure air for pure blood. Impurities generated by crowding. Illus- 
 tration. The emigrant-ship. Ochlesis. Close' rooms. False economy. Airing 
 bedchambers. The dust in the sunbeam. Carrying germs of disease. Tubes 
 over gas-burners. Changes produced by respiration and transpiration. 
 Seotion 2. Sewera and CesapooU. — Foul air. Airpuant. Pernicious influence. 
 Enteric fever. Cholera infantum induced. Great cities destroyers of the race. 
 Prof. F. Donaldson on impure air and want of sunlight inducing consumption. 
 Prof, Langenbeck on open air. Improvement in cities. Eichardson's " city of 
 health." Not yet attainable. 
 Section 3. Osone, — An air-purifier. Destroys organic remains. 
 Section 4. Malaria. — Bad air with peculiar properties. Kovnomiasmata. 
 Heat, moisture, and vegetable decay, factors. Periodical diseases. Home-bred. 
 Carried by winds and fogs. Protection given by woods. By eucalyptus-trees. 
 Impregnates water. Eocky Mountain fever. Dr. Smart's investigations. Snow, 
 Snow-water. Malaria set free by turning up soil, A great source of disease. 
 May be met by hygiene and prophylaxis. 
 Section 5, Animal Emanaiiona, — Influence not uniform, A dangerous dissec- 
 tion. Putrid eflflavia. 
 Section 6. De-Bitalised N(nt8e-Air. — Coa\-gas. Carbonic oxide. Leakage. Dan- 
 gers of explosion. An accident. Modes of keeping foul air in the house. The 
 water-closet. Sunlight and pure air wanted. Inclosures about houses objec- 
 tionable. In-doors or out-of-doors. Close closets. Airing clothes and bedding. 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Water ...... pp. 110-114 
 
 Pure water. Peter the Groat tries an experimeDt. Pollution of river-water. Of 
 well-water. Pump-water in cities, not potable. Wells about couatry-honses 
 liable to contamination. Necessity of filters. 
 
 Ice. — Ice often contains impurities. Caused disease at Kye Beach. Should not be 
 taken from foul water. 
 
 Lead in Water. — Lead-poisoning from water-pipes. Improved pipes. 
 
 Pure water needed for man and beast. Especially for milch-cows. Excess in 
 water-drinking. Care in use of cold water. Especially of ice-water. Bowditch 
 on general indiffereuce as to quality of water. Prospective improvement. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Clothing ...... pp. 115-122 
 
 Preserving uniformity of temperature. In winter and summer. Conducting or 
 noD-conductiog properties of materials. Differences between linen and wool. 
 Daily changes to be met. Cotton. Merino. Silk. Peculiar advantages of 
 wuolen garments. Bubber shoes. Light or dark colors. Adaptation. Tight 
 cravats dangerous. Also tight corsets. No tight-lacing among French women. 
 Dr. Atlee''B sketch of a fine lady. Necessity for easy -fitting shoes. Sandals or 
 gum soles. Dyes in stockings, shirts, etc., sometimes poisonous. 
 
 3716 Bead-Dress.— Too much for show. Straw hats. Turkish and Chinese head- 
 dress. Ladies'* bonnets very becoming. Nubes. 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 Exercise or Work. Influence of Occupation upon Lon- 
 gevity. Limit to Labor . . pp. 123-129 
 
 Section 1. ^ireroise or TTorJ.— Labor and struggle the destiny of man. Physical 
 exertion indispensable. TValking. Elding. Cholagogue influence of exercise. 
 From books to dumb-bells, the park, or the garden. Passive exercise. On the 
 water. Or railways. Absolute rest. Care about severe exertion. 
 
 Section 2. I^finence of OceujpaUon upon Longevity. — Work in the open air. 
 Farming better than trades In workshops. Printing. The farmer in office. 
 Unpaid labor. Bad effects. 
 
 Section 8. Umit to Labor.— Birc. days for work. Eight or ten hours daily. 
 Twenty-six hours a day excessive. Work imperative. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Food of Man. Accessory Food. Manner of eating. 
 
 Tea and Coffee .... pp. 130-153 
 
 Section 1. Food of Man: Flesh; Fish; Vegetables; Fruits.— Man omnivo- 
 rous. From vegetable to animal life. Balance preserved between vegetable and 
 
I CONTENTS. 
 
 animal nutriment. Cycle of construction and dissolution. Nitrogenized and 
 non-nitrogenized food. Changes in digestion and assimilation. Inorganic mat- 
 ters. Lime. Salt. Iron. Milk, the prototype of all food. Colloidal substance 
 for building up, starch for combustion, phosphatic salts for skeleton food. Bread 
 and milk for children. Good health and good morals influenced by regulation of 
 food (Galen). Composition of fresh meat. Fresh meat as a force-producer. 
 By cooking meat is more readily acted upon by gastric juices. Salting, pickling, 
 hanging, bad cooking, impair n utritive qualities. Meat as affected by age. Soups, 
 Eggs, hard or soft, fresh or old. Cooking by heat. By frost. Reasons for 
 cooking meat thoroughly. Parasites. Boasting. Baking. Frying. Broiling. 
 Boiling. Beef-tea. Preparation. Extracts and meat juices. Liebig's broth. 
 'WilBon''s rules for selection of meat. Sausage. 
 
 Ms7t,. — Fish less nourishing than meat. The ichthyophagi. Poisonous fishes. 
 Fish to be eaten fresh. Baiting. Oysters. Proper season for eating. Siguatera. 
 Crabs, Lobsters, Food wholesome or unwholesome. 
 
 ^reaeZ.— Composition of wheat. Defect in finest flour. Light bread. Spongy 
 texture. Objections to very fresh bread Lime in bread. Chemicals improperly 
 used. Unleavened bread. Corn-meal, Eye-flour. Brown bread. 
 
 Vegetables. — Cabbage, raw or cooked, Eice. Potatoes. Beans. Peae. Toma- 
 toes. Cucumbers. Turnips. Parsnips. Onions. Onion-soup, 
 
 Fruits. — Fruits generally safe. Not with milk or cream as dessert. Quality and 
 quantity. 
 
 Section 2. Condiments or Accessory J^ood.— Common 8a\t. Vinegar. Lemon- 
 juice. Abuse of acids. Piv:kles. Aromatic condiments. Spices. Mustard. 
 Capsicum for sea-sickness. 
 
 Mutter and Oil. — Butter and oil wholesome and nutritious when sweet. Benefi- 
 cial properties. 
 
 Section 3. Manner of eating. — Eegular intervals. Food not to be too hastily 
 eaten. Bad digestion and bad temper. A good stomach. Kesidence of Archeus. 
 The conscience of the body. To be respected. 
 
 Section 4. Tea and Coffee. Thein and caffein. Use of tea and coffee not harm- 
 ful in moderation. Promote the comfort of life. 
 
 Organic and inorganic substances necessary to food. Too mucb food. Injurious 
 effects. Immense range of consumption and of consumers. 
 
 CHAPTER YII, 
 
 Alcohol. Use and Abuse. Aedent Spieits. Wines. Malt- 
 
 LiQTJOEs ..... pp. 154-176 
 
 Alcohol useful in disease. Intoxicating principle of spirituous liquors. Spirit of 
 wine. Stimulant and narcotic. A glass of wine. A draught of whiskey. The 
 poison-line. Poison conditional. "Water of life (eau-de-me). Therapeutic 
 use. Alcohol is poison — and is food. Eichardson's disuse of alcohol. Thirty 
 grains to the pound. Functional and organic diseases induced. Tendencies 
 transmitted to posterity. Proper use may lead to abuse. Hufeland on wine. 
 The prima materia. FothergiU on alcobol. Conferences of Bonchardat. 
 Abuse of alcohol the greatest obstacle to advancement of human interests. Use 
 for convalescents, and workmen worn with labor. "Wine in old age. Some- 
 times beneficial. Composition of wine.^ French wines contain from five to 
 fifteen per cent, of alcohol. Inorganic matters in wines nutritious. "Wine not 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 suitable for children. Adults should only take wine with food. Abuse of wine. 
 Madeira, sherry, and marsala, contain twenty-five per cent, of alcohol. Adul- 
 
 ' terations. 
 
 £eer. — Excessive use injurious. Obesity. 
 
 AdiUterations of AlcohoUc Liquors. — Eeport made to Medico-Legal Society of 
 New York. A standard of purity demanded. Prof. Edes on alcohol in diet. 
 In vino Veritas. Men in earnest want no aid from alcohol for intellectual work. 
 Stimidation aids failing powers. Eestoration in fatigue. Dr. Parkes's experi- 
 ments. Exceptional use of wine. Chambers's views. Insidious dangers. Al- 
 cohol a cumulative poison. Disorders the liver. Exerts solvent action on Uving 
 brain. Aitkin on cumulative effects. Disraeli on drinking customs of England. 
 Too much hard drinking in America. Grog will not enable a man to do hard 
 work, nor to endure cold— nor help digeBtion— nor cure ice-water dyspepsia. 
 Bartholow and Flint on influence upon digestion. Wine at the marriage-feast. 
 Abnsits nan tollit ttsum. Misused wine. The limit of use. Vimt/m potena, 
 vinum nocens. Mild native wines. Drunkenness encouraged in England, 
 Beer only a poison from criminal adulteration. The goverament should take 
 care of the quality, the individual of the quantity. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ToBAooo. Chewing and SMOKiir& shottld be forbidden 
 
 IN Schools. Kepoet of Natal Sukgbons pp. 177-185 
 
 N icotin a deadly poison. Eichardson on tobacco. Injurious to boys— not always 
 to adults. Hufeland on agreeable stimulation of the senses. Luxuries to be 
 used with discretion. When the hanu exceeds the good. Nervous disorders 
 from excessive smoking. Hammond on use of tobacco. Smoking. Chewing. 
 JKeport of naval surgeons. Tobacco may be used in due limits. 
 
 L'Envoi. 
 
PART I, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.— HYGIENE TEE BETTER 
 PART OF MEDICINE. 
 
 "Medicine is a science which aims at the preservation of health, the 
 cure of diseases, and the physical perfection of man." — Benodabd. 
 
 We are told authoritatively that threescore and ten 
 years complete the term of man's life. The strong may 
 reach to fourscore, or yet beyond, but the infirmities of age 
 press heavily upon the octogenarian, and his burden is more 
 than his weak shoulders, those ruined pillars, can well bear 
 any longer. His failing knees, now neither firm nor flexi- 
 ble, bend under his weight, as he approaches the last scene 
 of all that ends this " strange eventful history " — or mys- 
 tery. 
 
 A learned and philosophic English physician, Dr. B. W. 
 Richardson, thinks man entitled, even in this degenerate 
 age, to ninety years of life : thirty to attaining to physical 
 and mental maturity ; thirty to dwelling on a plane in full 
 possession of his best faculties ; and thirty for a gentle de- 
 cline — so that, at ninety, his mortal career ended, he shall 
 return to earth, " dust to dust," sinking calmly and peace- 
 fully into the sleep of death, to rest with his fathers. 
 
 But such career implies a virtuous and well-ordered life. 
 Man has but one way, it is said, of coming into life — many 
 in going out of it. He is subject to innumerable casualties 
 
2 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 which may carry him off prematurely, but they do not ex- 
 ceed those to which he voluntarily exposes himself. A 
 blind self-indulgence, cares, passions, and anxieties, send 
 the larger portion of the human race to an untimely end. 
 
 "When Mirza was contemplating the scene on the bridge 
 of the seventy arches, besides some broken ones in the 
 distance, he saw among the crowd of heedless wayfarers 
 that many fell through concealed trap-doors and pitfalls, 
 through mere carelessness, while others were thrust down 
 by imps of darkness hovering over them, some of whose 
 names he learned to be Envy, Avarice, Hate, and Despair. 
 
 The name of our enemies or destroying angels, many of 
 them of the brood of Nemesis, may well be called Legion, 
 and, of all men born into this world, they allow not many 
 to escape being ingulfed on the way. Many must go of 
 necessity ; but many — thousands, even untold millions — 
 might pass the seventy years of life, and more, safely, hap- 
 pily, Jwcwwcfe, if they would follow well-known rules founded 
 upon knowledge, and guided by the right use of reason. 
 That he who would live to be old must begin early, has 
 passed into a proverb ; but living to be old is in itseK no 
 great matter. Thomas a Kempis, who was quite a philoso- 
 pher, says that a good life is the desideratum rather than 
 a long one. No wise man will dispute this dictum. The 
 saint and the sanitarian may doubtless take different views 
 as to a good life ; yet, notwithstanding divergences, there 
 are still points of contact. Prudence, justice, fortitude, and 
 temperance, are most important factors in every form of 
 good life, moral, religious, or physical. Dr. Draper himself 
 might concede this much, and admit, for once, a concord- 
 ance between science and religion. 
 
 Man born of woman hath but a short time to live, and 
 is full of misery. But man need not curtail his life, nor add 
 to his miseries. And yet he does both with, it almost seems, 
 premeditated folly. Dum vivimus, vivamus. That is a 
 good maxim if rightly applied. While we live, let us live. 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 3 
 
 So be it ; and let us live like rational beings. Let us bear 
 the ills we have with patience and fortitude, but let us not 
 multiply them. Let us add nothing wantonly to our own 
 sorrows or ailments, or to those of our friends or of society. 
 
 The writer, as a physician, only proposes to discuss the 
 evils that afflict our race, and are preventable, from a medi- 
 cal standpoint. The physician cannot go beyond the physi- 
 cal and intellectual welfare of man. Higher and more 
 important considerations must be left to a science beyond 
 and higher than medicine. John Selden says : " If- a phy- 
 sician sees you eat anything that is not good for the body, to 
 keep you from it he cries out, ^ It is poison ! ' If the divine 
 sees you do anything that is hurtful to your soul, to keep 
 you from it he cries out, ' You are damned ! ' " The doc- 
 tor of medicine says to a man who abuses alcohol : " You are 
 poisoning your blood, and impairing the organ of your in- 
 tellect, to the detriment of body and mind. "While injur- 
 ing your physical and mental faculties, you are also hurry- 
 ing yourself to premature death." The doctor thus warns 
 his patient against traps and pitfalls. The doctor of divin- 
 ity says to the same erring fellow-creature, "My good 
 friend, you are taking home to yourself an enemy capable 
 of sending you at once, body and soul, to hell ! " 
 
 The doctors, in this instance, do not differ, at least in 
 discerning the danger, and giving warning to the party ex- 
 posing himself, not only to one but to many pitfalls. Im- 
 measurable is the distance between the ends they aim at, 
 but both attempt to rescue a man from the power of an 
 enemy much too strong for ordinary humanity. 
 
 Some think that, when a man commits suicide, he there-' 
 by, ipso facto, proves his own insanity. Some think other- 
 wise. As skillful dialecticians might keep up an argument 
 upon this matter beyond the ordinary term of a mortal life, 
 and still leave the question unsettled, if not more perplexed 
 than ever, we may waive argument, and simply assert that, 
 if it be so, insanity is vastly more common than even its 
 
4 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 partial friends, the specialists who have charge of insane 
 asylums, ever assert it to be. Every man who hastens his 
 own end by folly, imprudence, or wickedness, is, in some 
 sense, a self-murderer. JPlures occidit gula quam gladius. 
 The ruinous effects of gluttony and drunkenness are obvious 
 to aU men ; but excesses much less gross, in which refined 
 and elegant and even religioTis men, and women too, may 
 and do participate, constantly but insidiously swell the 
 numbers of those who fall prematurely by the way. Tem- 
 perance, not luxury, is a chief contributor to health and 
 happiness, as well as to a green old age. It is strange that 
 the philosopher who may be considered as the first founder 
 of temperance societies — who, indeed, was almost intem- 
 perate in his temperance only — should be looked upon as 
 the very coryphaeus of the elegant sensualists, who have re- 
 versed his maxims for the pleasures and penalties of luxu- 
 rious living; — " Se sepelire," as Seneca says, " vino et epulis." 
 
 Excess and penalty are as sure as cause and effect in all 
 other relations. Man naturally and properly is always en- 
 gaged in the pursuit of happiness. The American claims 
 the right to such pursuit as inalienable from his individual 
 liberty. Now, whatever his pretensions, his happiness de- 
 pends greatly upon his health — moral and physical ; and 
 physical and moral health, says Hufeland, are as nearly 
 related as the soul and the body. But the greater part of 
 our countrymen, especially in the cities, have at best but a 
 semi-invalid existence. "Woman is ever an invalid ("ia 
 femme est une malade "), says a French physician; but men, 
 too, though stronger and firmer than the more lovely part 
 'of our race, are rarely in that enjoyable degree of healta 
 that makes life itself a pleasure. 
 
 Perhaps the reader has felt upon some occasions during 
 his life — at sea, mayhap, or away in the highlands — a sense 
 of joyousness or buoyancy, not the reward of any good ac- 
 tion, but simply a free gift of the genius loci, when he has 
 quaffed in the pure air, and found it more deliciously ex- 
 
INTKODUOTOKT EEMARKS. 5 
 
 hilarating than ever were draughts of sparkling wine from 
 the French vineyards ; and he has found therein for a time 
 ethereal that seems almost celestial happiness. 
 
 The writer, who, like most civilized men, never loses 
 consciousness of the burden of the physical frame, remem- 
 bers having just such sensations in the tierras templadas, 
 on the mountain-slopes of Mexico. Passing from the le- 
 thiferous lowlands on the coast, the tierras calientes, where 
 the air is still scorched by the near passage of Phaethon's 
 fiery chariot when he took his fatal drive, though the slug- 
 gish marshes have recovered their foul waters, to higher 
 and purer regions, nearer to heaven, the lungs seemed to 
 expand to let the pure oxygenated air reach to their deepest 
 recesses, the blood became revitalized, the circulation in- 
 creased in vigor, and altogether there was some such sense 
 of physical pleasure as Adam may have enjoyed in para- 
 dise. His numerous companions, every son-of-a-gun we 
 may call them (excuse the slang — it was a brigade of 
 Scott's invading army), showed the effects of physical re- 
 vival ; and every soldier's face, from being recently gloomy 
 and despondent in expression, became fairly radiant even 
 through the enamel of dirt and gunpowder which had been 
 duly substituted for soap-and-water. He invokes the tes- 
 timony of the surviving Mexican veterans as to this fact. 
 
 It takes a nomadic life thus to rejuvenate the wayfarer : 
 soldiering, or hunting, or fishing, or sailing ; sleeping under 
 canvas, or in the open air, under the broad canopy of heaven. 
 As cultivated people cannot, however, conveniently follow 
 such heroes of the wilderness as Sitting Bull or Chief Joseph, 
 on either side, pro or con, with musket and bayonet, or rifle 
 and scalping-knife, they might still find some practicaljle 
 means of recuperating vital resources. All the numerous 
 medicinal springs resorted to in America (and Europe) are 
 advertised with lengthy certificates of cures or revivals 
 effected by their health-giving waters. If Ponce de Leon 
 had lived in these days, he could have found a thousand 
 
6 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 springs instead of the one of his fruitless pursuit, whose 
 waters would wash out the wrinkles of age, and restore the 
 vigor and freshness of youth. "Without the trouble and risks 
 of exploring the jungles of Pascua Florida, he could have 
 found them in numerous pamphlets, lieing, lying (how do 
 you spell it ?) peacefully together in every doctor's waste- 
 basket. This is not intended to impugn the certificates. 
 Men and women do recuperate annually, by hundreds or 
 thousands, at all of the springs. A witty French physician 
 advised his patients to go to the springs by all means, but 
 with the proviso that they should never drink of the waters. 
 This is but a clever way of suggesting what the writer, in 
 his clumsy way, maintains to be a text with a meaning. 
 The medicinal springs are not indeed without medicinal 
 virtues. To say otherwise would be to contradict the com- 
 mon experience of mankind. But the greatest sanitary 
 benefit obtained at such resorts is but exceptionally from 
 the waters. Mr. Moreanmore and his wife (he is a great 
 business-man, and she is a leader in society) hold up pretty 
 well during the winter (though she has " the doctor " to see 
 her every other day), but, before the summer solstice, they 
 both feel much the worse for wear, learn that they have 
 heart, and stomach, and liver, though they have never 
 studied anatomy, and are more or less liable to a moral 
 jaundice. "When, in little domestic discussions, the gentle- 
 man teUs his wife — 
 
 "... Tou drive me to despair " — 
 
 and the vexed lady is just 
 
 " Too proud to weep, and too polite to swear " — 
 
 it is time to go, for both need it, to the springs, to the sea, 
 to the mountains — anywhere, to restore the perverted func- 
 tions, and mental and physical equilibrium. 
 
 And whither shall they go ? Where will they find a 
 panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to ? "Why, for a 
 
INTEODUCTORY REMAEKS. 7 
 
 great many of them, not all, wherever they can find pure 
 air and pure water — let us speak not of chemical purity, 
 which is unknown in Nature, but of sanitary purity — and 
 good food, and good lodgings, and good company. Once 
 upon a time, it is recorded, people had the unspeakable 
 privilege of exchanging their burdens with each other, but 
 practically the result was not satisfactory. Our health-seek- 
 ing friends m.ust throw off such portion of the burden as 
 they may, the con-oding cares of business, society rivalries, 
 ambition, and vanity; and then, nothing short of a bad 
 conscience, not even a bad stomach, will prevent them from 
 improvement that probably will admit of demonstration 
 both by measure and weight. Whether in the Adirondacks, 
 on the AUeghanies, at the Virginia Springs, or on the sea- 
 shore, they will acquire a sort of second-sight, and see once 
 again, as in youth, a little couleur de rose in their surround- 
 ings. The burden of life may not be lighter in fact, but 
 they will feel more able to bear it ; they can sti'aighten up 
 their rounded shoulders, though the burden be still there, 
 and they can walk erect and look up, as God intended those 
 creatures made in his image and likeness to do. When 
 creeping along, almost bowed down to the earth, they might 
 humbly crave Mr. Darwin's pardon for looking upward ; 
 but, when standing erect, they can look him in the face, and 
 tell him what Carlyle said of him, which was not compli- 
 mentary. 
 
 Sir John Franklin informs us that his explorers, when 
 suffering with cold and the pangs of hunger, became ex- 
 tremely petulant toward each other, two or three frequently 
 quarreling about nothing, and then each perhaps expressing 
 a sort of pity for the hopeless imbecility of the others. 
 The mental was as much impaired as the bodily strength 
 by hardships and involuntary fasting, so close are the bonds 
 between our higher and lower faculties. A dose of blue- 
 pill, says the learned Dr. Carpenter, will often rescue a man 
 from a state of melancholy or moroseness ; ind the doctor 
 
8 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 is right, though others may not agree with him : but we do 
 not here propose to discuss the problems of practical medi- 
 cine. 
 
 We mean to say that perverted health is a great factor 
 in personal, domestic, and social unhappiness. We mean 
 to assert that the city man and his wife, whom we have 
 sent to breathe pure air and to enjoy relaxation, will get a 
 taste of the elixir of life which is far more precious than 
 the philosopher's stone. Midas was the most unhappy of 
 men when everything he touched turned to gold. And our 
 rich merchant has probably been growing more and more 
 unhappy with every addition to his wealth ; and his wife 
 equally so with her superb telltale mirrors, and every new, 
 flashing jewel that she first craves and then possesses. 
 They have grasped some baubles in crossing the bridge 
 which seem much less valuable when possessed than when 
 pursued. But, when they get renewed health, they get 
 something really worth having ; something incomparably 
 more valuable than any of the gifts of that fickle jade whom 
 men call Fortune. Riches and fame, and power and glory, 
 and learning, are all bagatelle as compared with health. 
 If the family altars erected to Mammon in all the great 
 houses in America were overturned, and others erected in 
 their places to the goddess of health, with worship as sin- 
 cere as that now given to the golden idol, Americans would 
 cease at once to be a preeminently unhappy people. The 
 goddess of liberty herself dispenses not more blessings than 
 the goddess of health, but the two could well stand side by 
 side to be worshiped together in our republican Pantheon. 
 " Give me liberty, or give me death ! " cries an enthusiastic 
 patriot ; and many a poor fellow, without expressing any 
 "fine sentiments," sends a half-ounce of lead through his 
 cerebral lobes, because of a thought which only the report 
 of the pistol interprets : Give me health, or give me death ! 
 The man does not know that his unseen tormentor is, it 
 may be, but a legion of blue-devUs contesting with Archeus 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 9 
 
 the possession of the peptic glands, whence they could be 
 put to flight in a short time by a regimen of skim-milk and 
 a little medicine ; but he does know that health, happiness, 
 and even hope itself, have fled from his casket, and he 
 rashly releases his immortal spirit from its mortal frame. 
 
 A word, en passant, on milk-diet : We lately heard an 
 eminent physician say that he had lived for some six months 
 on this food exclusively, on account of a chronic malady ; 
 and that during all that time, though not cured, his life was 
 almost blissful. It passed as a pleasant, happy dream, and 
 yet it was not a dream, for his mental faculties, always 
 bright, were unusually active and clear, with none of the 
 inconsequential visions of the dream ; and his bodily frame 
 resumed the wellnigh forgotten elasticity of earlier years. 
 
 The wi'iter is not suggesting that the adult world go 
 back to milk-diet, which, as the apostle says, is food for 
 babes. The milk-cure has the approbation of many physi- 
 cians, though it was not a cure in the case just related, nor 
 in the general do we propose to consider or treat of cures. 
 In the renovation of health, curative agencies must indeed 
 find a place, and more than one infirmity may be remedied 
 by such measures as we will advocate : thus despondency, 
 bad temper, and rudeness, may be replaced by hope, equa- 
 nimity, and gentleness. Mr. and Mrs. Moreanmore shall 
 become polite and pleasant toward each other, for after all 
 that "little unpleasantness" between them, unknown to 
 themselves, owned a subjective rather than an objective 
 origin. Old Cornaro found that, whenever his stomach 
 was disturbed, he was taciturn and gloomy ; whereas, when 
 that organ was kept in good condition by that systematic 
 attention which he understood so well, he was always in a 
 good-humor with himself, and bright and agreeable toward 
 all around him. The reader, perhaps, may find the force of 
 this statement to come home to him. 
 
 Now, as health is the best gift that man can have, so far 
 as the mere mortal career is concerned, it follows that 
 
10 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 its conservation merits perpetual and universal attention. 
 When the poet says that life is a, fitful fever, he admits that 
 the fever is paroxysmal, or periodical, and all such are 
 more or less amenable to treatment. To say nothing of 
 physic, the paroxysms may be warded off for weeks, for 
 months, for years, by the gentle ministrations of Hygeia. 
 There is nothing occult in sanitary science ; it is open to all 
 men, and it should be a life-guide for all men. It is not at 
 all proposed hereby that a man should always be thinking 
 of his health, and of nothing else. Far from it. Such a 
 one is in danger of moping his life away, and, propter vitam 
 Vivendi, perdere causas. A man does not live to take care 
 of his health ; but, chemin faisant, he takes care of his 
 health that he may live. 
 
 As a man of thoughtful, cultured, and well-balanced mind 
 preserves his moral integrity by well-formed habits, with- 
 out making any exact analysis in regard to all of his actions, 
 so he may, in like manner, when duly instructed, preserve 
 his physical integrity, almost, it would seem, by instinct, 
 and without apparent painstaking or excessive precaution 
 in his daily career. Rules of life are right and proper, but 
 they must admit of some latitude ; a little swerving at 
 times from perfectly straight lines is necessary to the mo- 
 bility of human nature. Higid rules, like strait-jackets, 
 are only of occasional application. A sensible man ought 
 to trace out for himself a course in life which he shall fol- 
 low with honest fidelity. Nevertheless, he will find that 
 mathematical precision, admitting only straight lines or 
 right angles, will be unattainable. 
 
 When a ship is bound across the ocean, the captain lays 
 off his course and means to keep to the great circle ; but 
 one day he will be driven well to the north and another 
 well to the south of it. Sometimes a wind abeam lays his 
 craft on one side and sometimes on the other, and, in fact, 
 between varying winds and rolling seas, she is rarely on an 
 even keel ; and yet, by good management, she does keep 
 
INTRODTJCTOEY REMARKS. 11 
 
 pretty nearly on her course, and reaches her destination not 
 much the worse for wear, near about the time originally 
 indicated. 
 
 And so in our sixty, seventy, or eighty years of the life- 
 voyage, we should keep as nearly as we reasonably can to 
 the right way, without being unduly aggrieved by transient 
 variations. 
 
 The writer will undertake to make suggestions to in- 
 quirers, as to the most available means of keeping on the 
 right way in the life-career, and of avoiding many, at least, 
 of the traps and pitfalls set for the unwary. Accepting 
 that broad definition of medicine which involves with the 
 cure of diseases the preservation of health and the physi- 
 cal perfection of man, he feels that he is upon his own 
 ground when he attempts to present some of the most im- 
 portant measures necessary to the attainment of these great 
 desiderata. The measures suggested will be principally 
 such as directly afiEect the individual, and are more or less 
 under individual control. The wide range of sanitary 
 science, which involves great sanitary works and public 
 hygiene, is beyond the scope of a manual intended for 
 household reading. The attempt will, therefore, not be 
 made to condense it for these pages. 
 
 The writer has heard it suggested that doctors, who 
 live by human infirmities, ought to be rather employed in 
 their cure than in their prevention. When there is no 
 more sickness, then our Dr. Othello's occupation will be 
 gone. Truly, then he will have to take to other pursuits. 
 And so, when the millennium comes, and all the world will 
 be at peace, soldiers must be pensioned for life, lawyers 
 will be briefless, and even the clergy may repose in happy 
 sinecures. But the millennium has not come ; and, while 
 medicine embraces prevention and cure, its doctors must be 
 true to their trust. And as history will repeat itself, many 
 who will be shown the right will 
 
 " still the wrong pursue," 
 
12 • HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 and will still employ the doctor to give them medicine as 
 well as counsel. But those who will adhere to the right 
 way will yet want expert advice, and the doctor may be 
 more pleasantly and more successfully engaged in directing 
 the course and habits of life than in giving drugs to those 
 who needs must have them. Their use will never cease, 
 though people may find that they often need only advice, 
 and not medicine. A distinguished and witty physician 
 (O. W. Holmes) has said that, if all the medicine in the 
 world were thrown into the sea, it would be the better for 
 the people, but the worse for the fishes. Perhaps the pro- 
 fessor was right, for medicines have power for evil as well 
 as for good, and are much abused ; but if the learned gen- 
 tleman ever has a fit of the ague upon him, and does not 
 take medicine, we would only say that his wit surpasses his 
 wisdom, which at present we are far from affirming. 
 
 Furthermore, we may say that, as men are often thrust 
 through the traps in spite of knowledge and precaution, so 
 sickness will likewise be more or less their portion forever 
 — a part of their sad inheritance. " Is it not very remark- 
 able," says Chateaubriand, " and at the same time extremely 
 philosophical, that in Hebrew the generic term, for man 
 should signify fever or pain ? The root of enosh, man, is 
 the- verb anash, to be dangerously ill. This appellation 
 was not given to our first parent by the Almighty ; he 
 called him simply Adam, red earth, or slime. It was not 
 till after the fall that Adam's posterity assumed the name 
 of enosh, or man, which was so perfectly adapted to his 
 afliictions, and most eloquently reminded him both of his 
 guilt and its punishment. Perhaps Adam, when he witnessed 
 the pangs of his wife, and took into his arms Cain, his first- 
 bom son, lifting him toward heaven, exclaimed, in the 
 acuteness of his feelings, ' Enosh, oh, anguish ! ' — a doleful 
 exclamation that may have led afterward to the designation 
 of the human race." 
 
 The wisdom of the future, no more than the wisdom of 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 13 
 
 the past, Tvill blot out sickness, sorrow, and suffering, from 
 the world ; but it may mitigate them more and more, and 
 make great practical additions to the aggregate sum of 
 human happiness. 
 
 Sanitary science is the most beneficent of all developed 
 from mortal wisdom ; and we propose to offer some lessons 
 derived therefrom to those readers who not only wish to 
 avoid traps and pitfalls, but who desire the most rational 
 enjoyment of life. 
 
 At this period of medical history, as Dr. Bowditch says 
 truly, preventive has precedence over curative medicine. 
 Hermippus, of old, dedicated a tablet to " ^sculapius and 
 Health ; " now, sustained by Dr. Bowditch, we may reverse 
 the terms, and let the inscription read — 
 
 " Sanitati et .^:^!seulapio." 
 
CHAPTER n. 
 
 THE FOUR DIVISIONS OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 Ptthagoeas divided the life of man into four equal 
 parts, and indeed in this he followed very fairly Nature's 
 indications. From the first to the twentieth year the child 
 grows to manhood ; from the twentieth to the fortieth year 
 he recognized the young man ; from the fortieth to the 
 sixtieth, the man ; from the sixtieth to the eightieth, the 
 declining or old man ; beyond eighty, stat hominis umbra : 
 the man hut seems to live, and has no longer any part in 
 the drama of life. 
 
 Accepting the above as a natural division, we may entet 
 upon a survey of the interests, the wants and needs, the lets 
 and hinderances, pertaining to 
 
 THE FIRST QUARTER, OR THE FIRST SCORE OF YEARS. 
 
 Section^ 1. — Infant Life. 
 
 " Les en/ants sont ce qu'on les fait." 
 
 " Mere wax as yet, you fashion them with ease.'' 
 
 For the first five years after his arrival, the young hope 
 of the family has little else to do than to grow and to cut his 
 teeth. At first he is naked and not ashamed, but the ten- 
 der nurse soon gets him into his swaddling-clothes, which, 
 if she is judicious, will be loose and easy in all dimensions. 
 He takes a tepid bath before his toilet is made, and makes 
 his start, much against his will, very nice and clean. He 
 expresses his objections to the washing in no measured 
 
INFANT LIFE. 15 
 
 tones, while at the same time he fills his lungs with air, 
 and blows out some mucus. This air, by-the-way, ought 
 to be pure and soft, not foul nor arid. His hips ought 
 not to be bound up in gum or other water-proof material. 
 
 He is hungry from the start, if not voracious, and he 
 takes to his only appointed occupation with a zest that does 
 him no discredit. His food ought to be exactly of the 
 right sort ; and Nature will provide for that, if the mother 
 be healthy and qualified for her appointed duty. If she be 
 not so, then Heaven help the baby ! — which it often does 
 by transplanting him. 
 
 For the first six months he should draw his supplies ex- 
 clusively from the maternal fountains ; varied only by occa- 
 sional spoonfuls of water, without ice. When he gets just 
 enough, say from one to two pints in twenty-four hours, he 
 will thrive ; when too little, he will waste away. When he 
 gets too much, it's no great matter — ^he will find relief " in 
 the nurse's arms," according to his well-established custom. 
 
 During these early months a healthy child will rarely 
 cry, and when he does it is his only means of expressing 
 suffering. The daily bath may annoy him, especially if too 
 warm or too cold ; it should be made grateful to his feel- 
 ings, and not much prolonged. Otherwise he may cry be- 
 cause of an obtrusive pin, or from the pressure of a button, 
 or even from a piece of concrete starch. But in general 
 terms he will not cry unless suffering, whether from injury, 
 indigestion, or organic disease. 
 
 If a careful scrutiny will not reveal the source of his 
 distress, medical advice, but not necessarily medicine, should 
 be taken. The quantity and quality of his food must be 
 ■ investigated, and therewith the health and habits of the 
 mother or nurse, and the condition of his digestive organs, 
 which are often faulty by inheritance. All hygienic sur- 
 roundings must be looked to, and all treatment to which 
 the little one is subjected, in-doors or out. The baby must 
 have sun and air, but he often suffers from senseless exposure 
 
16 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 to these great sanitary agencies. A cutting wind or a burn- 
 ing sun may be too much for him. Dr. West tells us of a 
 little patient of his who was taken out by his nurse during 
 one of the hottest days in June : 
 
 " He was quite well and cheerful when he left the house, 
 but, after being out for some time, began to breathe hur- 
 riedly and irregularly, and his nurse in consequence brought 
 him home. I saw him about two hours afterward. He 
 was then restless, fretful, alarmed ; his surface generally 
 hot, and his head especially so, the brain pulsating forcibly 
 through the anterior fontanelle ; the pulse too rapid to be 
 counted ; the respiration hurried, labored, and irregular ; 
 and there were constant startings of the tendons of the 
 extremities. The child was on the eve of an attack of con- 
 vulsions, but the tepid bath relieved the heat of the skin, 
 the pulse fell, and the subsultus diminished." 
 
 A little judicious management saved the child, but it 
 will be observed that the wrong application of a right prin- 
 ciple, that is, of exposing the baby to sunlight, very nearly 
 lost its life. "We have often seen children drawn about the 
 streets of Baltimore in their little carriages, with faces up- 
 turned to a blaze of light that only eagle eyes could bear 
 with impunity. Is it any wonder that such children should 
 fret and cry, and become hot and feverish, and should even 
 die of cerebral congestion or convulsions, as the result of 
 such ill-judged attempts to make them healthy ? 
 
 The advice of a prudent physician to a sensible mother 
 will keep the child from many dangers, independently of 
 medicine. 
 
 In a little time, our young adventurer begins to travel 
 on all-fours, as becomes the animal that goes on four legs 
 in the morning. He ought to be allowed to scramble for 
 himself, so that there is no fire or pitfall to seduce his inex- 
 perience. His muscular efforts are very advantageous, and 
 should be encouraged. 
 
 Six months and the heat of summer being past, his diet 
 
INFANT LIFE. 17 
 
 may be gradually changed. Some delicate broth may be 
 alternated with the milk, arid then a little rice, or bread, or 
 mealy potato ; but not much starchy food withal during 
 the first year. As Nature supplies him with teeth, he can 
 begin to nibble a little. He will be well pleased with a 
 chicken-bone, with scraps of meat adhering to it. 
 
 At the expiration of a year, and again, we may say, the 
 heat of summer, he ought no longer to subsist upon his 
 mother. He should continue indeed for several years to 
 live principally upon milk-food. The milk should be sweet, 
 fresh, pure. If not, pathological conditions will be de- 
 veloped — indigestion, thrush, gastritis, enteritis, or other 
 maladies — when he gets beyond hygiene to medicine. 
 
 In regard to getting good milk, Drs. Meigs and Pepper 
 say, with abundant reason : 
 
 " The person who has charge of the child should always, 
 if possible, know the milkman personally, and, know ex- 
 actly where he comes from, and what manner of man he 
 may be. An honest farmer or dairyman, who pastures his 
 own cows on a healthy farm, is the man to be employed to 
 furnish milk to the poor little baby who has to seek another 
 dairy than his mother's. ... A good specimen of cow's 
 milk ought to be slightly acid or neutral ; it should contain 
 a certain average proportion of cream, and it should have 
 a certain average density." 
 
 The above is a very important suggestion, not only for 
 the nursing baby, but for the larger child also. Milk 
 bought from indiscriminate venders carries disease and 
 death into many a household in all our great cities. 
 
 It is beyond our province to pursue this matter here, of 
 which such a fearful exposh has been published by Prof. 
 S. R. Percy, of New York, and in various numbers of The 
 Sanitarian.^ The milk question demands both public and 
 private attention. 
 
 ' We may refer the reader especially to an article on the subject by 
 Dr. Bell, in the number for August, 1877. 
 
18 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 For the first five years onr nursery-plant requires sed- 
 ulous attention to clothing, and in regard to exposure to 
 vicissitudes. The child may have very fine clothes, and be 
 very ill clad ; and indeed this is but too common. He or 
 she should have room to spread, in very easy-fitting gar- 
 ments, without constriction of body or limbs. The clothes 
 should give adequate protection, according to the weather, 
 without being unduly cumbersome. Linen is not so good 
 for imderwear as cotton. Wool is better than either ; the 
 weight and thickness being adapted to the season, and even 
 to diurnal changes, which always require attention. 
 
 Good, pure air, in and out of doors, is all-important. It 
 is a common error to have the nursery overheated, and 
 ctften crowded ; and sometimes, by an unwise economy, 
 warm air is retained for the purpose of saving fuel. This 
 saving will scarcely offset the expenditure for drugs which 
 it induces. Even in the coldest weather, all the used air 
 should be blown out of the nursery every day, and the 
 apartment filled with fresh air — no matter how cold — 
 though, while this process is going on, our little friend 
 should be kept comfortable elsewhere, and in a room where 
 no busy house-maid is dusting or sweeping. 
 
 We will merely remark here, incidentally, that air little 
 less poisonous than that of the Grotto del Cane finds its way, 
 in many houses, into that apartment where purity is most 
 needed, from defective traps. We have seen, as every phy- 
 sician may have seen, children stricken with sudden death, 
 with rapid discoloration of the skin — a virulent form of 
 what maybe called spotted fever — from such poisoned air. 
 Adults feel the same influence, but they are less suscep- 
 tible to its toxic potency. Some degree of it is largely 
 influential in the production of that common and fatal 
 disease among city children known as cholera infantum. 
 What proves fatal to their tender organization may only 
 produce lassitude or malaise with their parents and nurses. 
 
 The different susceptibilities of children and robust 
 
INFANT LIFE. 19 
 
 adults may be illustrated by the following fact stated by 
 Dr. Murchison : " Twenty out of twenty-two boys, at the 
 same school, were seized with violent vomiting, purging, 
 prostration, and fever, within three hours. One boy had 
 been seized with similar symptoms two days before, and 
 died ; another also succumbed. So alarming was the out- 
 break that poisoning was suspected ; but, after a careful 
 examination, it was found that the sole cause of disease 
 was to be attributed to the opening of a drain at the back 
 of the house. This drain had been choked up for many 
 years, and had been opened two days before the first illness 
 occurred. The effiiuvia from the drain were most oflEensive, 
 and the boys had watched the workmen cleaning it out ; 
 none of the workmen, however, were subsequently attacked 
 with any of the symptoms which so seriously affected the 
 boys." 
 
 The poor boys had not, and could not have, the dura 
 ilia messorum, and their tender digestive organs, blood, 
 and nervous system, were poisoned by the foul air. When 
 such air pervades a house, especially when it invades a room 
 whence its escape is impeded, not only the first-bom, but 
 every other therein, is in danger of being smitten by the 
 hand of death. 
 
 As to out-of-door air, as there is said to be reason in all 
 things, so there may be unreason in all things. When a 
 child is playing around a country-house, on a cold day, and 
 the cold becomes painful, it will usually run in to get a 
 warming by the fire. When playing in the summer, and 
 the burning sun is beyond endurance, it seeks the shade of 
 a friendly tree, or the shady side of the house. But, in 
 town, little children whose parents do not approve the 
 method of education suggested as the best to Mr. Pickwick, 
 are often sent out with rigid system by their good mothers 
 for so many hours every day, in charge of a nurse who is 
 often neither careful nor wise. They are rarely dressed for 
 cymfort or health ; but, if the mother has taste and means, 
 
20 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 they •will be quite in the fashion, according to their time 
 of life. 
 
 The nurse, well clad herself, will often keep her little 
 charges standing in a biting wind, which few adults, the 
 children's father, mayhap, included, could bear with impu- 
 nity, while she is attending to interests of her own, or, 
 maybe, exchanging the compliments of the season with a 
 neighboring nurse or footman. Passive exposure to cold is 
 generally hazardous. Or it may be the summer sun which 
 has to be avoided ; unless the child is to be wantonly ex- 
 posed to the danger which has been already presented in a 
 quotation from Dr. West. 
 
 Sun and air are undoubtedly necessary. " Coddling," 
 as it is called, is very bad, but " hardening " is not without 
 its dangers. A child of delicate stamina may be brought 
 up to healthy maturity by rational hygiene ; but extremes 
 must be avoided. If you expose a fig or orange tree to se- 
 vere cold, to harden it, you will find your mistake when you 
 see that the nipping frost has killed it. It may be just so 
 with the child. There is a middle course, a via media, to 
 be observed in this, as in so many other matters affecting 
 human interests. 
 
 The little boy or girl, it matters little which at this 
 stage, will be demanding something more than milk and 
 bread for food, when he has vocabulary enough to call for 
 what he wants. But he should be dieted, principally, upon 
 these two articles, which, when good, contain a^^that is 
 necessary for his wholesome nutrition. Milk is, indeed, one 
 of the marvels of Nature. Physiologists tell us that certain 
 varieties of elements are necessary to the nutrition of ani- 
 mal life, and especially of human life. The infant requires, 
 equally with his father and mother, water and saccharine 
 or starchy, oleaginous, albuminous, and earthy or saline 
 matters, as lime and soda, to maintain any standard of 
 health, or even existence. Not one of them can be dis- 
 pensed with without detriment ; and nothing more need be 
 
INFANT LIFE. 21 
 
 added. Bread-and-butter and water contain them all, but 
 sucli is not the available food for early infancy. 
 
 The one comprehensive form of food which contains 
 all necessary ingredients is mUk. No element required for 
 the nutrition of this young being is omitted. The adapta- 
 tion between the nature of the food and the capabilities of 
 the recipient is perfect ; and, moreover, strange to say, this 
 food, while preserving its integrity, undergoes changes in 
 the relative proportions of its elements, with the total un- 
 consciousness of her who supplies it, adapted to the grow- 
 ing needs of the child. "Week by week, and month by 
 month, it undergoes these nutritive changes. Thus, as the 
 relative proportion of sugar decreases, the relative propor- 
 tion of caseine increases, in a ratio with the wants of the 
 growing organism. 
 
 Will the learned agnostics of the day insult the common- 
 sense of mankind by attributing all this work of design to 
 chance, or to Nature, rather than to Nature's God ? 
 
 When the child is advanced enough for stronger food, 
 bread-and-butter and soft-boiled eggs become appropriate ; 
 and then a little delicate meat once a day, with some sim- 
 ple vegetables. He may have four meals a day ; but he 
 should not have, as he so often has, the indiscriminate use 
 of everything on the table. He may have a little ripe and 
 selected fruit in season, but not as dessert ; it may fonn a 
 part of a meal, but it should not be superadded to a suffi- 
 cient meal. The most wholesome articles given as additions 
 to a full meal become unwholesome by improper use. Even 
 a glass of milk, added to a meal (other than constituting 
 a part of it), is not only superfluous but injurious. Ci-ude 
 fruits, as raisins, should be kept away. The writer has now 
 under his care a child ill from free indulgence in bananas. 
 
 Tea and coffee should be ruled out ; and wine, beer, and 
 liquors, should be given under just such restrictions as 
 would govern the use of the tincture of opium. In other 
 words, they should never enter into the subsistence of any 
 
22 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PEOMOTE IT. 
 
 healthy child. Food too heavy, rich, strong, or stimulat- 
 ing, may cause rapid development, but, as Hufeland says, 
 it accelerates unduly " their vital operation and consump- 
 tion ; the whole system and organs are put into too great 
 activity ; a foundation is originally laid for a more vigor- 
 ous hut a quicker life ; and, under the idea of strengthen- 
 ing, one really establishes the principal cause of a short 
 life." Thus, if excess is not immediately followed by ill- 
 ness, which it commonly is, however, it makes even infancy 
 "fast," in anticipation of a "fast youth " and early decay ; 
 from all of which Young America ought to be restrained 
 by the beginnings in the nursery. " Obsta principiis." 
 
 The child should always have clean clothes, clean bed- 
 ding, a clean and judiciously aired bedchamber, and a 
 clean skin, kept so by daily ablutions. It is better not to 
 attempt to harden it by disagreeably cold baths ; and it 
 should not be made too soft by very warm baths. The 
 bath might be, as a general rule, a few degrees warmer 
 than the temperature of the room, except in very hot 
 weather, when it might be made just so much cooler as to 
 be grateful and refreshing. 
 
 But withal cleanliness should not amount to a parental 
 mania. As a general proposition, the child should be kept 
 clean, but nevertheless there are times and places when he 
 ought to roll and tumble upon the face of Mother Earth, 
 even if hands and face, and knees and feet, do take some- 
 thing from her surface, and garments become rent and 
 spattered. When children claim their "rights," such as 
 these ought to be asserted and respected. 
 
 SECTiour 2. — Intellectual and Moeal Teaining. 
 
 Supposing the prime physical necessities attended to for 
 the infant years, in all such matters as food, clothing, air, 
 and water, its internal and external use, there are other 
 matters of extreme importance, which may not be left out 
 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL TRAINING. 23 
 
 of consideration. When should education begin? Very- 
 early; though we will not go with Coleridge to the ante- 
 natal history. We may agree, indeed, with Dr. Moore, 
 when he asserts that " our education may be said to begin 
 with our forefathers. The child of the morally instructed 
 is most capable of instruction ; and intellectual excellence 
 is generally the result of ages of mental cultivation ; " and 
 it is well for the child, in every sense, when the best moral 
 influences surround its birth. 
 
 By the time a child reaches five or seven years, it ought 
 to have a good deal of education. It (boy or girl, it is no 
 matter) should have some well-fixed ideas about right and 
 wrong in its own condition. It should know that it is sub- 
 ject to authority ; and it should also appreciate that the au- 
 thority is justice, tempered with mercy. Moral and reli- 
 gious ideas may be impressed upon young minds without 
 didactic lessons. They can learn a great deal without the 
 use of books, or without knowing a letter. They are keen 
 observers — simple, but not simpletons. Good example is 
 early appreciated ; and for that matter so is bad example. 
 A well-set, soldierly -looking man, as upright in carriage as 
 in character, was walking one day in the streets of Balti- 
 more in the snow, making well-marked footprints. Hap- 
 pening to look behind, he saw his little son stretching his 
 legs, to their utmost to walk literally in the footsteps of 
 his father. The general met a friend, and told him, with a 
 twinkle in his eye, that that boy had just given him a les- 
 son as to the duties of parents toward their children. — 
 (Miss Mason's "Life of General Robert E. Lee.") 
 
 " History is philosophy teaching by example," and this 
 applies as well to private and domestic as to public history. 
 For the moral, mental, and physical welfare of the child, 
 bad passions should be kept in check — irregular desires, and 
 such mean vices as lying, cheating, stealing. Precept, firm 
 but gentle correction, and, more than all, good example, 
 should be used to prevent or correct these faults which be- 
 
24 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 gin in infirmity and may end in crime. It is not a poetic 
 fiction to say that the " little actor " lives and moves 
 
 " As if Us whole vocation 
 Were endless imitation." 
 
 Those who have charge of children should never forget how 
 naturally they imitate those by whom they are surrounded. 
 
 Faults should be corrected with care and circumspection. 
 Terror should never enter into means of correction, neither 
 physical nor mental. Children have been frightened into 
 convulsions, and even into insanity, by being shut up for 
 punishment in dark places. This would be not unlikely to 
 follow where their fears have been encouraged by ignorant 
 nurses, who people all dark places with spectres or the 
 spirits of the dead. No imaginary fears should ever be ex- 
 cited ; and they should know of no skeleton in the closet 
 more terrific than a little twig of birch, which may be re- 
 ferred to occasionally, and used rarely, with due discretion, 
 and perhaps with as much pain to the parent as to the child. 
 No nurse should ever be allowed to threaten children with 
 "the doctor," as they frequently do, for the doctor should 
 always have the confidence of his little patients to do them 
 justice. All foolish threats should be positively forbidden. 
 
 Over-rigor with children in regard to their ordinary 
 faults, from which none are exempt, is about as mischievous 
 as over-indulgence. Too much exaction is far more apt to 
 make of them little hypocrites than little saints. 
 
 A few sentences, which we render from a work by 
 Fenelon, "De I'i^ducation des Filles," may be applied to 
 all children : " We must remember that children have but 
 young heads, that their age inclines them to pleasure, and 
 that persons in charge sometimes exact of them a degree 
 of uniformity and of seriousness of which they themselves 
 would be incapable. They make even a dangerous impres- 
 sion of ennui and sadness upon their temperament, in speak- 
 ing to them always of words and things above their com- 
 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL TRAINING. 25 
 
 prehension ; no liberty, no enjoyment ; always lessons, si- 
 lence, constrained position, correction, and menaces." 
 
 Children would not grow so weary of their lessons if 
 little sallies of diversion were sometimes permitted ; in fact, 
 they require some variety to escape from mental weariness. 
 Let them look around occasionally, or have some little 
 play ; a very exacting regularity does them harm ; you 
 may awake their desires for information by amusing sto- 
 ries, and teach them much that they ought to learn hy 
 pleasant conversation. Such pains as may be taken to 
 season serious occupations with enjoyment will tend to 
 abate the desires of youth for dangerous amusements. It 
 is weariness and constraint which make children so wild 
 for diversion. If a girl finds in her mother an agreeable 
 companion, she will not be so anxious to get away from 
 her for imsafe companions. Let their pleasures be simple, 
 like their food, and not exciting. And, in regard to ali- 
 ment for mind and body, this great moralist says, " Sobriety 
 always gives appetite, without any need for rousing it with 
 high-seasoned dishes, which lead to intemperance." " Tem- 
 perance," said an ancient author, " is the best handmaid of 
 pleasure ; with this, temperance, which gives health to body 
 and mind, one is always in a state of rational enjoyment ; 
 one needs neither apparatus, now shows, nor expense," to be 
 pleased ; a little play devised at home, reading, some work 
 to be accomplished, a walk, innocent conversation, which 
 gives relaxation to work, give more real satisfaction than 
 the finest music of the composers." 
 
 These simple pleasures are quiet but safe ; there are 
 others more exciting and very unsafe; Simjjle pleasures 
 wear well, and leave no evil in their train ; they are always 
 beneficent, while others are like those high-flavored and 
 adulterated wines which please the taste raost at first, but 
 which soon injure the health of those who use them. The 
 mental temperament, as well as the taste, is spoiled in the 
 pursuit of highly vivid and exciting pleasures. The best 
 4 
 
26 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 that we can do for children under our charge is to accustom 
 them to this simple life, to keep them in the habit of it 
 while we can, and to warn them against the dangers of 
 those pleasures which excite the passions ; and not to leave 
 them to themselves at the time, as it is so generally done, 
 when the passions become most active, and when, conse- 
 quently, they have most need of restraint. 
 
 SECTioif 3, — The Kindeegaeten. 
 
 Children are not benefited by being set too early at 
 books. Youthful prodigies rarely astonish the world by 
 superior wisdom or learning in after-years. Hufeland says, 
 very justly : " The powers of the mind must not be ex- 
 erted too early. A child may begin too soon, when that 
 period is chosen during which Nature is still employed in 
 forming the bodily organs and powers, and has need of 
 all her strength for that purpose. This period extends to 
 the seventh year ; and if a child be obKged at an earlier 
 age to apply to learning, and be confined in a sitting post- 
 ure, its body will be deprived of the noblest part of its 
 powers, which must be now wasted by the business of think- 
 ing; and the consequences will be, a checking of the growth, 
 imperfect formation of the limbs, muscular weakness, bad 
 digestion, corrupt juices, the scrofula, and a preponderance 
 of the nervous system in the whole machine which will be- 
 come burdensome during life, by nervous afEections, the 
 hypochondriasis, and evils of the like kind." 
 
 A well-ordered Kindergarten comes in well to substitute 
 an intelligent teacher for a nursery-maid. It is a grateful 
 sight to see a well-bred, intelligent, neat, and tidy young 
 lady, with a group of happy-looking children around her, 
 giving them instruction in a well-aired apartment, or, better, 
 in the open air, when they think she is only amusing them. 
 We have known children who were very insubordinate at 
 home, for want of discipline and occupation, to learn and 
 
CHILDHOOD.— MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CULTURE. 27 
 
 observe proprieties at the Kindergarten, without any feeling 
 that they were in a penal colony, where rebellion, as in 
 some sterner schools, is considered a sort of point of honor. 
 When the Kindergarten is equal to the original design, 
 it is a proper school in which to educate (eduoare) the minds 
 and bodies of little children, without detriment, to say 
 nothing of exhaustion, to either. Instead of detriment, we 
 may justly expect a wholesome deyelopment of sound prog- 
 ress in all dimensions. 
 
 SECTioiiT 4. — Childhood. — Mental and Physical 
 
 Culture. 
 
 " He said that three things were essential for children : intellect, exer- 
 cise, discipline. 
 
 " The difference between intelligence and ignorance is as the difference 
 between life and death. 
 
 " He said that science (knowledge) was an ornament in prosperity and 
 a refuge in adversity ; that those who gave a good education to children 
 ought to be esteemed as much as their parents, since the latter had sim- 
 ply given them life, while the former had taught them how to make life 
 pass profitably and happily." — Satinos of Aristotle. 
 
 Climacterics. — Our forefathers had a conviction that 
 the human frame underwent a complete change every seven 
 years, and that it reached the grand climacteric at 7 X 9 
 years. This is in a measure following the numerical sys- 
 tem of Pythagoras ; and, if it be somewhat imaginary, it 
 still has a resemblance to truth. 
 
 The first seven years of life are very critical, and statis- 
 tics show us that the mortality exhibits a wonderfully large 
 percentage (exceeding forty per cent.) during that term. 
 
 Thereafter the organization is firmer, the brain reaches 
 nearly to its full development, and becomes prepared for 
 exercise in a higher cultivation of the mental faculties. 
 Books come properly into use. We have now schoolboys 
 and schoolgirls to deal with. For the boys, the good 
 mother must quietly let loose the apron-strings, or expect 
 
28 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 to have them broken. For seven years, her eye may follow 
 wistfully her schoolboy, with " satchel and shining morning 
 face," as he moves ofE, willingly or unwillingly, to school. 
 The manner of his going, by-the-way, will depend very 
 much upon how the school is conducted. He ought to have 
 seven years for mental and physical culture, with a fair 
 allowance for each. His little sister ought to have the 
 same. By the time the two reach the next climacteric, or 
 fourteen years, he ought to be prepared for special or 
 technical education, which is to fit him for his life-pursuit. 
 The girl will be about entering upon early womanhood, 
 and too much care and consideration cannot be bestowed 
 upon her. 
 
 We will suppose the boy and the girl to be entering 
 now upon a seven years' term of preliminary or primary 
 school education. They are to learn not everything, omne 
 seibile, indeed, as unwise friends may wish, but certain ele- 
 ments upon which the most useful parts of human knowl- 
 edge may subsequently rest as upon a stable foundation. 
 
 One of the most highly-educated of our countrymen 
 used the following language : " To read the English lan- 
 guage well, to write with dispatch a neat, legible hand, and 
 to be master of the, first four rules of arithmetic, so as to 
 dispose of, at once, with accuracy, every question of figures 
 which comes up in practice — I call this a good education. 
 And if you add the ability to write pure, grammatical Eng- 
 lish, I regard it as an excellent education. These are the 
 tools ; you can do much with them, but you are hopeless 
 without them. They are the foundation ; and, unless you 
 begin with these, not with flashy attainments, a little geol- 
 ogy, and other ologies and osophies, are ostentatious rub- 
 bish."— (Edward Everett.) 
 
 We venture to say that it is but a minority of college 
 graduates, male or female, especially of the former, who 
 could give proof of possessing Mr. Everett's excellent educa- 
 tion. If not acquired early it is not acquired at all ; and 
 
CHILDHOOD.— MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CULTUKE. 29 
 
 students go on to ologies and osophies who are by no 
 means well grounded in such elementary acquirements as 
 reading, writing, grammar, geography, and arithmetic. 
 Parents and teachers are anxious to push the pupils to 
 higher studies, prepared or not prepared. They push the 
 precocious pupils ahead, and let others follow as they may. 
 The bright ones, over-bright perhaps, are always exhibited 
 to examiners as specimens. But it is a common remark, 
 " That child is too bright to live long ; " and this indeed has 
 been a proverb among many nations : " Froecocibus mors 
 ingeniis est invida semper ; " and sometimes, we must fear, 
 the precocity is the cause of the early death. 
 
 For those not likely to have any ultimate use for foreign 
 languages, living or dead, seven years is not too much to 
 give to acquiring a good English education. If the cram- 
 ming process must be undergone, let it not begin before 
 the child has reached the second step of the ladder, or 
 fourteen years. 'The elder Disraeli, indeed, says that there 
 is no good study before twenty ; and doubtless the best is 
 done much after that time. A book of clever French cari- 
 catures, "Le Diable k Paris," exhibits one of a row of 
 students whose heads are emerging through their desks, 
 heads thrown back and mouths wide open, in each of which 
 is a funnel, and into every funnel a learned, professor is 
 forcing, not one, but many forms of learning — Latin, Greek, 
 Hebrew, moral and natural philosophy, belles-lettres, fine 
 arts, and polytechnics of all sorts. The artist shows us the 
 modem process of cram,ming, but he does not tell us how 
 such meals are to be digested. Neither himself nor the 
 professor vouchsafes any explanation of this important 
 matter. 
 
 Girls often learn the elements better than boys, for sev- 
 eral reasons. In the first place, they have generally less to 
 learn. Their studies are less varied. And, secondly, they 
 are frequently brighter and quicker and always more docile 
 than boys. They are fonder of approbation ; more fearful 
 
30 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 of disapprobation. Bad marks on paper are more temble 
 to them than flesh-marks are to their often obstreperous 
 brothers. But then girls are more apt to sufEer for their 
 very docility. They will go to bed at night hungry and 
 exhausted, mind and body, and purblind, from reading 
 and writing by gaslight, rather than take reproof on the 
 morrow for faulty exercises or lessons. We have repeatedly 
 seen girls injured by excessive efforts to keep well with 
 their classes and to obtain promotion. Of course, study 
 is not the sole evil. Confinement in-doors, when they 
 ought to be out, constrained positions, mental tension, and 
 mental anxiety, are all factors in undermining the future 
 woman. 
 
 During the whole school-term there should be abundant 
 recreation, and more physical than mental exercise. Nature 
 requires it, and we may not safely defy her laws. Roger 
 Ascham thus urged : " To omit study for some time of the 
 day, and some time of the year, maketh as much for the in- 
 crease of learning as to let the land lie some time fallow 
 maketh for the better increase of corn. . . . And surely the 
 best wits to learning must needs have much recreation, and 
 ceasing from their books, or else they mar themselves, when 
 base and dumpish wits can never be hurt with continual 
 study; as ye see in luting, that a treble minikin string must 
 always be let down, but at such time as when a man must 
 needs play, when the base and dull string needeth never to 
 be moved out of his place. . . . And even so, I am surei 
 that good wits, unless they be let down like a treble string, 
 and unbent like a good casting bow, they will never last 
 and be able to continue in study. And I know where I 
 speak this, philologe, for I would not say thus much afore 
 young men, for they will take soon occasion to study little 
 enough. But I say it therefore because I know, as little 
 study getteth little learning, or none at all, so the most 
 study getteth not the most learning of all. For a man's 
 wit, fore-occupied in earnest study, must be as well recre- 
 
CniLDHOOD.— MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CULTURE. 31 
 
 ated with some honest pastime, as the body, fore-labored, 
 must be refreshed with sleep and quietness, or else it can- 
 not endure very long." 
 
 If a clever man must be let down like a treble string, 
 how much more necessary for the half-fledged man or 
 woman, the schoolboy or schoolgirl ! The learned clerk, 
 just quoted, takes care withal to put in a saving clause in 
 regard to young men, or boys, who indeed are not very apt 
 to damage themselves by hard study, however much time 
 they may waste in the schoolroom. 
 
 Persons who have not given attention to the matter 
 have very little idea how much time is wasted in the school- 
 room. The young mind, as the young body, soon becomes 
 weary, and will not bear prolonged strain. Six hours in 
 the schoolroom, and three hours at home given to prepara- 
 tion, making nine hours a day for brain-work, is far too 
 much for the young brains of growing children. If carried 
 out, they are injured by the work ; if not carried out, they 
 are still injured by the confinement. We say nothing at 
 present of probable objections to the schoolroom itself. 
 We are asserting directly that children cannot undergo 
 nine hours daily of brain-work without detriment, and 
 that both to body and mind. The subject has been care- 
 fully investigated. Mr. Edwin Chadwick, who is second 
 to no authority upon this matter, found as the result of 
 methodical observation that young children could not keep 
 up voluntary attention to study beyond two hours in the 
 morning and one in the afternoon. " By force, even, they 
 cannot get more than one additional half -hour of real at- 
 tention, and that half -hour proves in the end a mental mis- 
 chief as well as a bodily injury." He found that half-time 
 children learned as much habitually in the schools as full- 
 time children ; that is, those who gave three hours to study 
 learned fully as much as those who gave six hours — we will 
 not say to study, but to school. The half-time children 
 came from the factories. " As they gain in bodily condi- 
 
32 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 tion by the reduction of their physical labor, so do they in 
 mental condition by the reduction of the time devoted to 
 mental labor." 
 
 The passage which we have italicized is very significant. 
 It merits great consideration. It gives prominence to the 
 fact that mental and physical occupation ought to bear due 
 proportions to each other, and that the welfare of the child 
 depends upon the observance of these proportions. It is 
 equally wrong to exhaust young vitality with too much 
 body-work or too much brain-work. We have spoken so 
 far only of mental education, but there is another kind 
 referred to in speaking of the reduction of physical labor. 
 Of children in factories, an observant physician. Dr. Kay, 
 of Manchester, England, says : " The employment absorbs 
 their attention; their persevering labor must rival the math- 
 ematical precision, the incessant motion, the exhaustless 
 power of the machine. These patients lose flesh ; their feat- 
 ures are sharpened, the skin becomes sallow, or of the yel- 
 low hue which is observed in those who have suffered from 
 the influence of tropical climates. The strength fails, the 
 capacities of physical enjoyment are destroyed, and the par- 
 oxysms of corporeal suffering are aggravated by deep men- 
 tal depression." 
 
 In a parliamentary examination the following is a speci- 
 men of question and answer: "Question. Were the chil- 
 dren excessively fatigued by their labor ? Answer. Many 
 times we have cried when we have given them the little 
 victualing we have to give them. We had to shake them, 
 and they had fallen asleep with the victuals in their mouths 
 many a time." — (From " The Body and the Mind," by Dr. 
 Moore.) 
 
 This cruel treatment has been, of late years, we believe, 
 considerably modified, and the factory-children in some 
 instances have opportunities of resting the body while im- 
 proving the mind, the very existence of which, to genera- 
 tions of them, was almost entirely unknown. 
 
CHILDHOOD.— MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CULTURE. 33 
 
 The children often, it seems, could not eat their crusts, 
 from physical exhaustion ; and schoolgirls, as we have 
 said, have often failed to take their meals on account of 
 excessive mental tension. Extremes meet ; and where ex- 
 tremes are harmful they should be avoided. 
 
 Supposing the capacity for study to he equal, on the 
 average, to three hours daily, as stated by Mr. Chadwick, 
 three hours more might be given to school, with recesses, 
 and going to and fro ; that is, one-fourth of the day might 
 be allotted, not altogether to study, but to school, with 
 recitations, and intervals for recreation, and inspiring oxy- 
 genated air out-of-doors. No matter how excellent the 
 school department, it should be vacated at short intervals. 
 Air may be very insidiously changed. Dr. B. W. Richard- 
 son says : " In another series of experiments I learned that, 
 if oxygen were freshly made, and passed in the fresh state 
 through a chamber in which living animals were placed, the 
 animals would continue to live. But, if the oxygen that 
 had swept through the chamber — although it were thor- 
 oughly purified of animal products, and although it still ap- 
 peared to be absolutely pure oxygen — were used again, it 
 failed to sustain life until it was subjected to the action of 
 the electric spark, when it regained its activity. I infer 
 from these observations that oxygen may exist in the at- 
 mosphere in an inactive condition, not inducing necessarily 
 acute disease, but depression of mind, languor, torpidity, 
 and cachectic feebleness of body." — (" Diseases of Modern 
 Life.") 
 
 We may equally infer that in the schoolroom, where 
 the oxygen must become vitiated, a new supply should 
 be let in abundantly at very short intervals, besides what 
 may be let in by methodical ventilation while the children 
 are in the apartment. It would brighten their wits, as well 
 as improve the physical condition, to give them fifteen min- 
 utes in the open air at the expiration of every hour in the 
 schoolroom. 
 
34 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 This relief would tend to save them from the morbid 
 condition just stated by Dr. Richardson. 
 
 We may now pass on to the third climacteric term, 
 from fourteen to twenty or twenty-one years — canamus 
 paula majora ; and, inter alia, we may take a summary 
 view of thevery important subject of school-hygiene. 
 
 Section 5. — Youth. — ^Peogeessive EDucATioiir. 
 
 " Should the body sue the mind before a court of judicature, it would 
 be found that the mind would prove to have been a ruinous tenant to the 
 landlord." — Plutakch, quoting an ancient philosopher. 
 
 The boy or girl of fourteen ought to be sufficiently 
 educated to enter upon the special course or courses appli- 
 cable to the future career. The boy may go to college, to 
 the polytechnic, or directly to business. The girl may 
 begin to make her special preparation for her probable des- 
 tiny. She will presumptively be man's helpmeet ; but she 
 ought to be more or less prepared for taking care of herself, 
 which may be a necessity, with or without marriage. 
 
 Physical and mental development now go on rapidly, and 
 the capabilities increase in a corresponding ratio. Higher 
 faculties now come into use. The one mental faculty 
 most exerted hitherto has been the memory, acquisition, or 
 retentiveness ; now, the powers of discrimination, or con- 
 sciousness of difference, and similarity, or consciousness of 
 agreement, will be brought into more active exercise. To 
 use other language, will, memory, and judgment, are to be 
 at once trained, developed, and regulated. The mind will 
 not be a ruinous tenant except by faulty construction or 
 faulty management. There is danger, indeed, of making 
 too much of the intellectual, at the expense or to the neg- 
 lect of the moral faculties, and thus the mind may indeed 
 become a ruinous tenant ; but this is simply because of 
 misdirection. 
 
 The intellect is not everything ; the whole being must 
 
YOUTH.— PROGKESSIVE EDUCATION. 35 
 
 be educated, and with well-considered design. If the pre- 
 ceding seven years at school have been well directed, a 
 youth of average capacity will be equal, if need be, to self- 
 culture, whatever may be his pursuit. K he have the in- 
 nate force, he may become another Dr. Franklin. If he 
 have indifferent riiental capacity, and little aptitude for 
 learning, he may go through a college course, learning almost 
 nothing, and then enter one of the learned professions, to 
 swell the number of the low grade of hoi polloi ministers, 
 and doctors, and lawyers, who are but ill qualified to take 
 care of the spiritual, corporeal, or legal interests of their 
 fellow-men. 
 
 From fourteen to twenty-one, then, boys ought to be 
 educated to and for their business, and in accordance with 
 their fitness. The same may be said of girls ; though their 
 term should be shorter, and the exactions much less. The 
 idea of educating girls, or young ladies, as we may now call 
 them, exactly as boys, or as young men, is an ephemeral 
 folly that will soon correct itself. 
 
 Everybody ought to be educated, but this does not imply 
 a whole nation of scholars or of bookworms. Such a nation, 
 it seems, was discovered by a traveler in Laputa. All were 
 famous scholars, and all arts and trades were carried on 
 exclusively by scholarship. The methods used in farming, 
 says the veracious traveler, " were to me wholly unaccount- 
 able, for, except in some very few places, I could not dis- 
 cover one ear of com or blade of grass." One learned 
 scholar had been engaged for eight years upon a project 
 for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers. He expected 
 soon to illuminate the governor's gardens at a reasonable rate 
 — the only drawback being the high price of cucumbers 1 
 Another profound scholar was hard at work to calcine ice 
 into gunpowder, and was writing at the same time a treatise 
 on the malleability of fire. 
 
 Everybody ought to be educated, indeed, on a common 
 plan for the groundwork, and on a special plan for the su- 
 
38 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 perstructure or for the business of life. To keep youths at 
 hooks from fourteen to twenty-one without special object is 
 to incapacitate many of them for practical business pursuits. 
 
 Every community wants thinkers, it wants workers, and 
 a strong and vigorous race of men and women. When the 
 physique is destroyed or impaired, as it so often is by pro- 
 tracted study, or rather by protracted schooling, which is a 
 very different thing, the intellectual culture is about as good 
 as seed cast upon a barren soil. A writer in the Some 
 Journal says : " A weak mind in an herculean frame is 
 better than a giant mind with a crazy constitution. A 
 pound of energy with an ounce of talent will achieve greater 
 results than a pound of talent with an ounce of energy. A 
 man without health may be a giant in intellect, but his 
 deeds will be the deeds of a dwai"f." 
 
 Sound sanitation aims to keep mind and body both in 
 the best working order ; and this is only to be accomplished 
 by keeping both sufficiently and duly exercised, and with 
 due regard to their respective capabilities. In ancient 
 Athens, in her palmiest days, intellectual, SBSthetio, and 
 gymnastic training went together in the curriculum, and 
 modern wisdom should rehabilitate this combined method. 
 
 A writer (Dr. Oswald) in a late number of the The Pop- 
 ular Science Monthly, on the " Age of Gymnastics," gives 
 undue prominence to the development of the physical man. 
 Such doctrines as he would promulgate would tend to make 
 athletes, indeed, but this is going beyond the true deside- 
 ratum. " How many of the most admirable character-traits 
 of the ancient Greeks, and how much of their success ia the 
 arena of life, may be distinctly traced to these sources of 
 mental and physical health ! Health, in the widest sense of 
 the word, was indeed the primary characteristic of their 
 age, for health and vigor are synonymous. The same pro- 
 cess of adaptation that qualifies his body for the perform- 
 ance of athletic feats disqualifies it for the development of 
 any morbid elements, and accelerates the elimination of 
 
YOUTH.— PBOGRESSIVE EDUCATION. 37 
 
 effete matter from tlie organism. We accordingly see that, 
 among the creatures of the wilderness whose normal condi- 
 tion is one of muscular vigor, disease is wholly abnormal, 
 and premature death only the consequence of wounds or 
 protracted famine." 
 
 He gives some apocryphal instances of the powers of 
 ancient athletes with approbation. " Polydamus was able 
 to fracture the skull of a steer with a single blow of his 
 fist, and tamed a wild horse by catching the hoofs of the 
 hind-legs, which he twisted inward till the joints of the fet- 
 locks creaked whenever the animal attempted the least re- 
 bellious movement." 
 
 Many youths of the present day have a morbid admira- 
 tion for bruisers and boxers, and other athletes ; but such 
 heroes are not models for imitation. Good health by no 
 means demands great physical prowess. It demands only 
 so much bodily exercise as may be necessary to keep the 
 bodily functions in good working order. Young men may 
 be as readily wrecked by violent bodily exercise as by ex- 
 cessive mental labor. This we have seen illustrated under 
 our own observation. 
 
 Neither body nor mind should be overdriven in early 
 life. To return briefly to brain-work, we may say, with 
 Dr. Allbutt ("On Brain-Forcing"), that the health of the 
 brain and the nervous system, upon which the abundance 
 of its fruit depends, is closely related to the tone and activity 
 of the rest of the corporeal frame. The volume of force 
 issuing from the brain is largely dependent, for example, 
 upon the power of the stomach and allied viscera, upon the 
 power of rapidly digesting and assimilating an abundance 
 of food, and of breaking up and excreting spent material. 
 
 But children are not to go back to " the freedom of the 
 wilderness." "No mistake," says Dr. Allbutt, "is more 
 fatal than that of parents who let children run wild, on the 
 pretense of physical development. This, indeed, they may 
 obtain, and how guarded we are to be in forcing the brain 
 
38 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 I need not say again ; but there can be no misfortune to a 
 child greater than to escape the life of justice, order, and 
 rule, or to escape the training of those perceptions of social 
 needs and social laws which, when graven in our ganglia 
 and long current in our nerves, become habits of sympathy, 
 charity, and self-sacrifice. Herein I fear that the partisans 
 of ' secular ' education are greatly at fault. Children may 
 be trained in board-schools to habits of cleanliness and 
 order, but they are not trained in the principles of liberty, 
 nor are their eyes turned to the sanctions of religion. 
 From this system I fear there may be a sad awakening for 
 a coming generation." 
 
 Another passage from this writer is of general applica- 
 tion : " Control is eminently a creature of education, and is 
 perhaps the most precious gift of the individual man. 
 Without justice, temperance, and definite industiy, the 
 most brilliant attributes of mind may be impotent for good, 
 and without the habit of social subordination and the bond 
 of social sympathy, the most brilliant society would be but 
 a rope of diamonds. Brain-forcing is terribly mischievous. 
 It urges genius into precocious fruitage ; it drains the 
 springs of nervous force, it excites high tension without 
 giving volume to fortify it, it stints the variety of mental 
 expansion, and by enforcing control it breaks the spirit. 
 The true purpose of education is, first of all, to teach dis- 
 cipline — the discipline of the body, and the higher discipline 
 of the mind and heart." 
 
 If the intellect be solely cultivated, the "most brilliant 
 attributes " are often worse than impotent for good ; they 
 are exceedingly potent for evil both to the possessor and to 
 society at large. A great intellect highly cultivated, with- 
 out moral and religious restraints, is one of the most dan- 
 gerous powers that can be intrusted to human use or mis- 
 use. 
 
 "... There is a learning unrefined. 
 That oft enlightens to corrupt the mind." 
 
YOUTH.— PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION. 39 
 
 Let us now turn to a consideration of the education of 
 the gentler sex, which is certainly not less important, though 
 it may be less comprehensive, than that given to boys. The 
 gu-1 of fourteen, now a good English scholar, will presump- 
 tively be learning some accomplishments ; it may be music, 
 dancing, drawing, and one of the modern languages. She 
 will probably learn something of the natural or mechanical 
 and something of the moral sciences. But a rigid system 
 of study at this time of her life, even so much as may be 
 admissible for boys of her own age, is not safe for her. 
 The ambition, now somewhat wide-spread, to put her through 
 a boy's course, as if she were intended for manhood and not 
 for womanhood, is a fatal one. Physical incapability for 
 the fulfillment of duties likely to devolve upon her hereafter 
 as wife and mother, is a common penalty for this unwise 
 ambition. In intellectual competitions between boys and 
 girls it is true girls often carry off the prizes. The aver- 
 age girl is commonly quicker-witted than the average 
 boy, and she will run away from him, like Atalanta from 
 her lovers, unless something diverts her from her course. 
 But the competition, for her sake, should never be entered 
 upon. 
 
 There is a whimsical account in the Spectator of a re- 
 public of women, where the girls were all brought up for 
 the work of men. They learned to box and play at cud- 
 gels ; they were taught to ride the great horse, to shoot, dart, 
 sling, and to perfect themselves in military exercises, No 
 woman was to be married until she had killed her man. 
 The ladies used to play with young lions instead of lap- 
 dogs. Blushes and sighs were prohibited. The face that 
 had the most scars was looked upon as the most beautiful. 
 But, after all, the republic was a failure, and, although 
 young ladies still kill their men, they generally manage 
 mercifully to bring them to life again. 
 
 Now we would substitute calisthenics for military exer- 
 cises, and, when practicable, our prot'eg'ee should have a 
 
40 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 palfrey instead of a great horse for daily exercise. There 
 is no sensible man living who does not wish his daughter 
 to be a well-educated and intelligent woman. Bufthere 
 are many who, from want of knowledge, see their hopes 
 frustrated on account of mismanagement while the girl is 
 obtaining her education. A very instructive work, entitled 
 " Sex in Education, or a Fair Chance for the Girls," from 
 the pen of Prof. Edward H. Clarke, was published a few 
 years ago by J. R. Osgood & Co., of Boston. The pro- 
 fessor raises no question as to superiority or inferiority be- 
 tween the sexes, but he urges that physiological difEerences 
 must be respected. During her school-days the girl is pass- 
 ing through the most critical change of her life, and, in 
 developing womanhood and establishing a new function, 
 the vital powers are severely taxed. If her vital forces be 
 then " properly nurtured and cared for, they are a source of 
 strength and power to her. If neglected and mismanaged, 
 they retaliate upon their possessor with weakness and dis- 
 ease of the mind as of the body. . . . 
 
 " It has been reserved for our age and country," he says, 
 " by its methods of female education, to demonstrate that 
 it is possible, in some cases, to divest a woman of her chief 
 feminine functions ; in others to produce grave and even 
 fatal disease of the brain and nervous system ; in others to 
 engender torturing derangements and imperfections that 
 embitter a lifetime. Such, we know, is not the object of 
 a liberal female education." 
 
 The true friends of the gentler sex must not be misled 
 by any faction-cry. It is an important part of " women's 
 rights " that their physical health shall not in their youth 
 be sacrificed to mental attainments, which, with broken 
 health, will be of little use to them or to society. 
 
 Dr. Clarke made inquiries of some of the professors in 
 Western colleges, where co-education of the sexes is adopted, 
 as to its workings. Some of these gentlemen replied can- 
 didly that this experiment was "intellectually a success, 
 
YOUTH.— PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION. 41 
 
 physically a failure." The experiment, then, is a failure, as 
 erery hygeist would suppose beforehand. 
 
 " The fact is now generally admitted," says Prof. Bain 
 ("Mind and Body"), "that thought exhausts the nervous 
 substance, as surely as walking exhausts the muscles." 
 Young people are generally said to be thoughtless; and, 
 indeed, they are no more fitted for grave or exhausting 
 thought than for heavy or exhausting physical labor. It 
 is especially wrong to exhaust the girl's nervous force when 
 she has such special need for it. 
 
 An accomplished physician, who has taken a great deal 
 of pains to get up positive information on the important 
 subject of vital statistics, shows a deplorable failure of the 
 standard of health among New England women, who prob- 
 ably have more schooling than any others of their sex in 
 America. Since they have given up employments which 
 chiefly exercised their muscles for mental pursuits, they 
 show, instead of a good development of the muscular and 
 lymphatic temperament, a great predominance of nerve- 
 tissue, so that the constant demands of the brain are far 
 greater than the physical system as a whole can bear. 
 "The condition of all the organs and their functions is 
 impaired, the nervous system being often in a capricious or 
 morbid state. These physical changes, extending to the 
 brain, involve certain changes of character, and have an 
 important bearing on domestic life." — (Dr. Nathan Allen, 
 in The Sanitarian, June, 1877.) 
 
 This careful statistician shows, at some length, what 
 great practical evils to the individual woman, and to so- 
 ciety, result from faulty education, that is, in its most com- 
 prehensive sense. Mental pursuits, the fashions of the day, 
 the artificial habits of society, and the luxuries of modem 
 civilization, with other causes commencing in early life, are 
 all factors in impairing the stamina of the constitution, and 
 in perverting the harmony or balance of organization. 
 
 This mismanagement of early life unfits the girl for her 
 
42 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PEOMOTE IT. 
 
 future duties. If she become wife and mother, statistics 
 unfortunately prove her unfitness for her sacred trust. If 
 she have chUdren, as the writer has seen in practice, as a 
 derivative from her own nervous disorganization, her chil- 
 dren are eminently liable to convulsions or multiform neu- 
 roses. 
 
 " Without wealth of bone and blood," says Dr. Allbutt, 
 " volume of nerve-force will dwindle, and the rarest quality 
 may fail «of proof, or lose its splendor. Before women can 
 hope. to do hard and high work, sense must expel sensibility, 
 and schoolgirls must cease to walk out in a row, to veil 
 their faces, to wear stays, and to eat delicately." — ("On 
 Brain-Forcing.") 
 
 In a recent number of The Popular Science Monthly 
 (June, 1878) appears an editorial on the "Study of the 
 Brain," in which there is a commentary upon the studies at 
 the Jersey City High-School. " The course of study is of 
 a high grade," and, as the principal tells an interviewer, 
 "girls can master the higher branches of education far 
 more readily than boys." They work hard for it, and a 
 fatal ambition is stimulated. " School-work," says the edi- 
 tor, "becomes a steady pull in these directions, with no 
 time for reflection or observation, or independent exercise 
 of thought upon the subjects chosen. The system affords 
 no check against overdoing. The teachers push on those 
 who should be held back, and, if they do not break down 
 and die outright, no harm is recognized. The idea that 
 pupils, girls especially, can be sustained by excitement and 
 carry off the honors in apparent health, while their consti- 
 tutions are undermined, ill-health entailed, and the power 
 of vigorous accomplishment through life destroyed, seems 
 hardly to enter into the minds of educators. It is one of 
 the fruits of our dominant high-pressure, machine systems 
 of culture, that the mass of teachers and of education 
 journals pooh-pooh the notion of overwork in school." 
 
 Other fruits are thus stated in the report which gave 
 
THE SCHOOLHOTJSE. 43 
 
 occasion to the commentary. " Of these female graduates, 
 two bright and promising young women died in early wom- 
 anhood, one is now an inmate of an insane asylum, and two 
 or three others are said to be in delicate health." 
 
 "When the ^^Titer offers his opinions, and a few vouchers, 
 in regard to female education, it is because he is its earnest 
 advocate, not its opponent. He only insists that it must be 
 in accordance with, and not in opposition to, sound physi- 
 ology, or, in other words, to the very nature and condition 
 of women. In the " freedom of the wilderness " the attri- 
 butes of the body are alone respected ; in high civilization, 
 some seem to think the jnind alone worth culture. There 
 is a juste milieu, which is the true course for the preserva- 
 tion of the mental and physical integrity of our country- 
 women. 
 
 We would wish to see our women models of good edu- 
 cation, in all things becoming to them : in religious, moral, 
 intellectual, and physical culture. We can agree with Syd- 
 ney Smith when he says : " The education of women favors 
 public morals ; it increases the pleasures of society by mul- 
 tiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a com- 
 mon interest, and makes marriage an intercourse of under- 
 standing as well as of affection by giving dignity and 
 importance to the female character." But, withal, the 
 female character is and ought to be indelible, and the best 
 education for women must always be conducted with, due 
 regard to this particular fact. 
 
 Sectiok 6.— The Schoolhofse. 
 
 It would be a great saving of " Young America," and 
 thereby of all America, if every schoolroom in the land, 
 public or private, were subjected habitually to the official 
 inspection of a medical examiner. Inspection, with authori- 
 tative correction of hygienic mismanagement, would make 
 an immense addition to the sum of health and happiness of 
 the American people throughout the whole republic. 
 
44 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 Most schoolhouses are defective in matters of light, 
 ventilation, and warmth, and in regard to cei"tain append- 
 ages which should not only not be ignored, but which 
 should have special care for many reasons. 
 
 In some schoolrooms there is at times an intolerable glare 
 of light in the pupils' faces ; in others there is a want of light, 
 the whole apartment being sombre and gloomy. In very 
 many the light falls in all sorts of irregular directions. These 
 things are very trying to the eyes of the pupils, often doing 
 them serious injury, besides affecting the general health. 
 The writer has seen this matter so often ignored that he 
 was particularly pleased, in passing through the rooms of 
 the Maryland State Normal School, under the intelligent 
 management of Prof. M. A. Newell, the principal, to find 
 that in all cases the light came uniformly from the left side 
 upon the desk of every pupil. Any student or writer will 
 be at once impressed with the advantage of this arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 If the schoolroom be not well ventilated, the children 
 are poisoned by the foul air which they are compelled to 
 breathe over and over again. But ventilation requires sci- 
 entific care. When a crowded schoolroom becomes close 
 and hot during the winter, windows are often opened to let 
 in fresh air, which indeed is a necessity, but then direct 
 draughts falling upon the children while overheated, and 
 probably perspiring, with powers of resistance already low- 
 ered, are likely to produce acute inflammatory diseases, in 
 lieu of the chronic poisoning otherwise being engendered. 
 Proper arrangements let in fresh air perpetually, and let 
 out foul air ; but these are never quite adequate, and, to 
 supplement deficiencies, the rooms should be often vacated 
 and aired. 
 
 "A due supply of unadulterated air," says Dr. Bell 
 (" Schoolroom Stunting," in Sanitarian), " to the respiratory 
 organs is recognized as among the most important condi- 
 tions of health at all ages and under all circumstances, but 
 
THE SCHOOLHOUSE. 45 
 
 at no age is this so essential as during childhood. Air 
 vitiated by respiration is not only known to be among the 
 most active influences in promoting the spread of many 
 fatal diseases, but on children who may escape these dis- 
 eases it exercises a powerfully depressing influence. A 
 person consumes about two gallons of air every minute, or 
 one hundi'ed and twenty gallons per hour ; and every pulsa- 
 tion of the heart decomposes nearly a quarter of a pint of 
 air. Hence it follows that if the air remains subject to re- 
 respiration, or is not supplied with a due quantity of oxy- 
 gen, functional activity is obstructed, nutrition is interfered 
 with, and the sensibilities are blunted ; the brain of the 
 child is filled with impur^blood, and is not only itself de- 
 pressed, but through it the whole organism is deranged ; 
 and although life may not be speedily destroyed in extreme 
 cases, the intelligence is stunted and mental capabilities 
 overthrown." 
 
 Thus a foul, crowded, ill-ventilated schoolroom defeats 
 the objects for which it was designed ; it injures the mind 
 as well as the body. It is no wonder that the observant edi- 
 tor of The Sanitarian speaks of the " hollow-eyed, bleached, 
 and feeble progeny of the schoolroom ; they have no stami- 
 na — hot-house plants destined to perish on the very thresh- 
 old of life." 
 
 The warmth of the schoolroom should be regulated by 
 the season, and even by the day. A pleasant temperature 
 will not vary far from 70° Fahr., and, if volumes of hot air 
 come through a flue, the air ought to be softened by the 
 aid of a little watery vapor. The lighting and extinguish- 
 ing of fires for the cold months should not begin by and 
 end in exact accordance with the almanac. A depressing 
 degree of cold, though a month before the usual time, should 
 be counteracted by artificial warmth ; and so when the win- 
 ter fires have been stopped for the season, upon cold and 
 wet days they should be temporarily rekindled. Exposui'e 
 to cold air is usually beneficial to children, when its influence 
 
46 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 is met by active exercise ; but passive exposure to cold is 
 extremely trying, and they should not be subjected to it. 
 
 There are certain important appendages to the school- 
 room which should be kept rigidly clean, and so arranged 
 that no effluvia therefrom shall ever permeate the part of 
 the house occupied by the scholars. Every compartment 
 should admit of one person only at a time ; and this is said 
 at once in the interests of health and of morality. 
 
 Withal, the schoolhouse should have a bright and 
 cheerful look, with plentiful sun and air, and, if possible, 
 play-grounds. In the absence of grounds, a level floor on 
 top of the house, properly guarded, would serve for tran- 
 sient recreation. 
 
 . We have spoken of education as if it were the sole 
 business of the third climacteric term ; and so indeed it is, 
 but the most useful education is not confined to school or 
 college. 
 
 "The many must live by labor," says Prof. Newell, 
 " and the school must help them to live. No longer must 
 the primary school be looked on as merely the vestibule to 
 the high-school, which in its turn is but the antechamber 
 of the college ; but the public school in all its departments 
 must be regarded as the turnpike-road, from which the 
 travelers may step at once into the farm and the work- 
 shop." Their education is continued then on the farm or 
 in the workshop, and generally this conduces to their own 
 health as to individual and national prosperity. The pro- 
 fessor makes also the practical remark that no one's educa- 
 tion can be regarded as finished, even in the most limited 
 sense, until he knows how to earn a living for himself. 
 
 Whosoever wishes to see details about schoolrooms, 
 their defects and requirements, may find them very fully 
 exhibited in the proceedings of the Medico-Legal Society of 
 New York, published in The Sanitarian, and in many arti- 
 cles from various writers in that valuable periodical. 
 
 The writer will only add now that many times, when 
 
PHYSICAL EXERCISE. 47 
 
 such a disease as pulmonary consumption appears de novo, 
 and is repudiated by the friends in its incipiency as " never 
 having been known in the family," its origin may be found, 
 not indeed in heredity, but in the foul air of the school- 
 room, and the innumerable hygienic errors which are un- 
 wisely, if not criminally, allowed to exist as concomitants 
 of education. 
 
 Section 7. — Physical Exeecise. 
 
 Physical culture must become a constituent part of edu- 
 cation for both sexes. The brain,, or rather the whole ner- 
 vous system of man, is the organ and exponent of his 
 intellect. The integrity of this system cannot be perma- 
 nently maintained otherwise than in corpore sano. Neither 
 mind nor body will have vigor without due exercise. Both 
 should be well worked in youth, but still within prudent 
 limits. Either or both may be prematurely exhausted. 
 
 Exercise for health should be as much out-of-doors as 
 may be conveniently practicable. But gymnastics and 
 calisthenics in-doors are also advantageous. A student 
 or clerk, when weary of mental work and physical rest, 
 may gain great relief by a few minutes' use of dumb-bells. 
 It is no object to have these very heavy. The writer has 
 had to stop young men from the violent use of heavy dumb- 
 bells, because of the evident harm resulting from such use 
 of them. It is a question whether rowing-matches do more 
 harm or good to the physical man. What is certain is that 
 violent exertion is by no means necessary for the best hy- 
 gienic results. It must be remembered that most profes- 
 sional athletes become stale, even if they do not die young. 
 
 Physical culture is indeed a necessity, but, like mental 
 culture, it requires scientific training. 
 
 Dr. Bowditch made extensive inquiries among presidents 
 of colleges as to the physical culture of the students, and 
 where it was made a matter of attention, and he gives brief 
 
48- HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 extracts from letters received as to its influence, as follows : 
 " The pupils gain ' good ' health, ' more vigor,' ' increased 
 strength,' ' very high rate,' and ' even correction of physical 
 defects.' One says, ' Dyspepsia and debility, formerly preva- 
 lent, have gone ; ' another, that ' those exercising regularly, 
 if ■well, keep well ; if weak, get better, and escape dis- 
 eases usually incident to student-life, coming out fresh and 
 strong.' 'Physique of Western students almost always 
 good.' ' Many students neglect exercise, and need hygienic 
 advice.' ' Manly carriage and womanly grace, and agility 
 in both sexes, promoted.' ' Military drill, especially for 
 these last qualities, is good.' ' The morale of the exercise 
 is good, and the tone of the student is improved.' In one 
 ' the moral effect was more marked than the physical.' On 
 the contrary, one says that the moral effect may be bad 
 with a low-minded superintendent." 
 
 The first necessity, in the case of the low-minded super- 
 intendent, would be to remove him, or to withdraw every 
 respectable youth from such wretched guardianship. 
 
 " Very few of the colleges," says Dr. Bowditch, " compel 
 any kind of physical exercise, or encourage it, as any uni- 
 versity should encourage every means tending to a perfect 
 manly and womanly development. I can but hope that, 
 during the coming century, a better course will be fol- 
 lowed." — (" Hygiene in America.") 
 
 This matter is now fortunately claiming so much of 
 public attention as to insure, we may trust, -a methodical 
 concurrence in the future of physical with mental training. 
 
 The subjoined letters, from thoroughly competent ob- 
 servers, go far to sustain the advantages of conducting pari 
 passu physical with mental culture : 
 
 I. — Letter from Dr. Haemon, U. S. N., in charge during the absence 
 of Dr. Gihon, to Prof. Eiohaed MoSnEEET, M. D., Baltimore. 
 
 Question 1. "What time is given daily to physical training, and 
 what to study, with the cadets at the Naval Academy ? 
 
PHYSICAL EXEBCISE. 49 
 
 Answer. The time devoted to daily recitations and study is 
 divided into four periods : 
 
 1. From 8.30 a. m. to 10.30 a. m. 
 
 2. From 10.45 a. m. to 12.44 p. m. 
 
 3. From 2 to 4 p. m. 
 
 4. From 7.30 p. m. to 10 p. m. 
 
 This last period is without recitations, and one hour of it is oc- 
 cupied every evening hy one of the four classes in hoxing, fencing, 
 dancing, or other exercise in the gymnasium. 
 
 From 4 to 6.30 every afternoon are drills in infantry tactics, 
 great guns, seamanship, or hoats, in which all the cadets are obliged 
 to participate. Three days in the week a portion of the second 
 period, from 10.45 a. m. to 12.45 p. m., is occupied also in one or 
 another of these drills. 
 
 On Saturday they have recitations and practical exercises for 
 the second. The afternoon is a half -holiday. 
 
 Question 2. Is the health of the cadets promoted or impaired 
 by the academic course ? 
 
 Answer. It is undoubtedly promoted. 
 
 Question 3. Are any forms of disease developed, or any tenden- 
 cies thereto arrested ? State the facts as they appear to your ob- 
 servation. 
 
 Answer. During the time of my service at the academy I can- 
 not discover that any peculiar form of disease is traceable to the 
 course of study and training pursued here. The cadets are admitted 
 between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years, after being sub- 
 mitted to a careful and thorough physical examination. Thus we 
 have to do with a body of healthy, well-formed boys. Our sick- 
 list comprises, in nine cases out of ten, simple ailments, such as 
 slight derangements of the digestive functions and trivial injuries. 
 
 During the session, we have a number of cases of functional eye- 
 trouble, caused by the strain upon the organs of sight from night- 
 study by gaslight. 
 
 > As all candidates showing any decided tendency to disease of 
 any kind are rejected, we have no opportunity of observing the effect 
 of the academic course upon persons of that class ; but from the 
 marked improvement in the appearance of those cadets who were not 
 among the best physical specimens upon entry, and the robust, finely- 
 developed young men who compose her graduating classes, almost 
 6 
 
50 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PEOMOTE IT. 
 
 ■without exception, I do not doubt that the four years' course at the 
 Naval Academy is well adapted to arrest any and all tendencies to 
 disease and faulty growth which owe their cause and progress to 
 the want of proper attention to physical training at this time of 
 life. 
 
 Question 4. Do the cadets use tobacco in any form ; and if they 
 do, is there any appreciable effect from its use ? 
 
 Answer. The use of tobacco by the cadets is prohibited. . . . 
 As a complete answer to the latter part of this question, I inclose 
 herewith a printed copy of a report upon this subject made by 
 a board of medical ofiBcers appointed by Admiral Kogers for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Question 5. Do the cadets use wine, beer, or ardent spirits, in any 
 form ; and if they do, is there any appreciable effect ? 
 
 Answer. The use of all of these articles is forbidden. 
 (Signed) Geoege E. H. Haemon, P. A. Surgeon, U. 8. N. 
 Uhited States Natal Academy, Ankapolis, August 27, 1878. 
 
 II. — Letter from General Fbanois H. Smith. 
 
 VlHGIKIA MiLITAKT INSTITUTE, 1 
 
 August 38, 1878. ( 
 
 Bichard McSherry, M. D., Baltimore, Maryland. 
 
 Deae Sib : The surgeon provisionally in charge of the "Virginia 
 Military Institute Medical Department has referred to me your 
 letter of the 22d inst., for the information sought by it. 
 
 I have been in charge of the Virginia Military Institute for 
 nearly forty years, and I can give you the result of this large ex- 
 perience. 
 
 The tendency of the academic course in any coUege is to impair 
 the health of a close student. One of the objects sought by the 
 military drill and discipline here is to enforce hygiene in the whole 
 life of the student, and to combine the military drill as a means of 
 developing the physical ft-ame, and of giving regular exercise. The 
 benefits resulting from this system are manifestly observed every 
 year. 
 
 I have a son now pursuing his theological studies in a theologi- 
 cal seminary. He had graduated at the Virginia Military Institute 
 after a four years' course here. He told me the debility of his 
 seminary fellows was so marked in contrast with Ms own vigor, 
 
PHYSICAL EXERCISE. 51 
 
 although himself of a delicate frame, that he was enabled to do 
 twice as much mental labor as they. 
 
 Young men predisposed to pulmonary disease often come here 
 for the physical training. "We have now a case in the school who 
 had a dreadful cough when he came — no appetite, and some spitting 
 of blood. He is developing into a sound man. 
 
 This pulmonary tendency is checked ; the chest is developed, 
 and digestion regulated. 
 
 Many boys have debilitating losses. This infirmity is checked, 
 and indeed controlled. 
 
 Tobacco is used, although prohibited. We regard it as injuri- 
 ous, and do all we can to check its use. No spirituous drinks are 
 allowed. Yours respectfully, etc., 
 
 Fkancis H. Smith, Superintendent. 
 
 The author begs leave to call attention especially to ten- 
 dencies checked as indicated in the above instructive and 
 suggestive communication. It conveys a most useful prac- 
 tical lesson to parents and teachers. 
 Baliimose, September, 1S1&. 
 
CHAPTER m. 
 
 TEE YOUNG MAN.— THE YOUNG WOMAN. 
 
 Section 1. — The Young Man. 
 
 " There is so much to win, there is so much to lose." 
 
 Feom twenty to forty years of age the man is maturing, 
 physically, mentally, and morally. The collegian, at about 
 one-and-twenty, comes to the end of his college course, on 
 what is called commencement day. Collegian or not, he 
 is now to start out on a life of comparative independence ; 
 and he has a commencement day, or time, which, in his ca- 
 reer, is eminently critical. He rarely understands or be- 
 lieves in the perils by which he is surrounded. He bursts, 
 as it were, from the egg-shell, which has confined him so 
 far, upon the great world, where 
 
 " Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train," 
 
 are awaiting to welcome him. He is in danger of believing, 
 with Epicurus, that pleasure is the sovereign good ; but he 
 rarely understands, with that philosopher, that pleasure, to 
 be enduring, must have its first element in self-control — in 
 mastery of the passions, and not in subjection to them. 
 
 He ought to begin with hope ; it is a well-spring of 
 health and happiness. But, in point of fact, our young 
 men, with few exceptions, soon find cares — it may be corrod- 
 ing cares — pressing upon them. If rich, they can rarely 
 avoid being led into evil courses and the ways of danger. 
 If poor, they find themselves soon engaged in a struggle for 
 existence, which, to sustain the man's estate, requires the 
 
THE YOUNG MAN. 53 
 
 man's abilities. The mind and the body are now attaining 
 to their fullest capabilities ; and the young man may, must^ 
 and ought to, work up to them. His brain gets its full de- 
 velopment ; his physical frame, just having attained to its 
 height, now expands in other directions. If not " stunted " 
 by previous mismanagement, nor damaged by overwork, 
 nor incapacitated by idleness, he is presumptively ready 
 for his allotted work. If farmer or artisan, he is ready for 
 the "plough, the loom, or the anvil," and in his pursuit he 
 shows and is the man. Who was more man than Gabriel 
 Lajeunesse, unless it were, indeed, his father, Basil the 
 blacksmith ? If he live not by the work of his hands, but 
 by trade, or by letters, or by the learned professions, or by 
 the arts or the sciences, he finds the avenues all closed, en- 
 trance difficult, and advancement still more so. Surely the 
 imagined independence of manhood has for most young 
 men many drawbacks. Bieing, however, in the current, he 
 must swim or sink. His good education, which has given 
 knowledge to his mind, strength to his body, and force to 
 his moral character (unless it has done so much, it was not 
 good education), now proves its usefulness. 
 
 In selecting his pursuit it is to be presumed that he has 
 taken one not incompatible with physical health or moral 
 integrity. Some callings are adverse to the one, some to 
 the other, and some to both. Almost all occupations have 
 some particular bearing upon the well-being of the indi- 
 vidual, and so has the manner of pursuing them. Phy- 
 sicians, for example, as a rule, are shorter-lived than men 
 of other learned professions. They know, indeed, what hy- 
 gienics require for good health, as regular sleep, regular 
 meals, regular habits of exercise, and regulated study. They 
 know the dangers of foul air in the sick-chamber, the hos- 
 pital, the swamp, the pathological room. They work hard, 
 too hard frequently, with mind and body, lose rest, and en- 
 counter infection with a full understanding of what may 
 befall them, not in ignorance of the danger. Thus it may 
 
54 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 be, and has been said of them, truly : " Alns inserviendo 
 consumuntur ; aliis medendo moriunturP 
 
 Unfortunately, many industrial pursuits are in them- 
 selves unfavorable to health and longevity : the miller, the 
 baker, the stone-cutter, the tailor, the dressmaker, the shoe- 
 maker, the printer who is at work nearly all night on the 
 morning paper, and many others whose labors are indispen- 
 sable to the good or the wants of mankind, too often sac- 
 rifice health and life ia the service of their fellows. The 
 life of the soldier or sailor is not more imperiled than 
 theirs. The primitive man was gardener, herdsman, hunter, 
 and he led to a great extent a free life in the open air. If 
 he had been suddenly captured, and confined in a close 
 workshop, he would soon have pined away and died like 
 those wild birds shut up in cages, which die where older 
 captives at least endure existence. 
 
 As we cannot go back to primitive habits, and as we 
 must all have our daily bread, and clothes, and morning 
 paper — ^whosoever may fall by the way — we can only trust 
 to the sanitation of the future to remodel workshops and 
 habits of life so as to give all benefits possible to the toUing 
 " slaves of civilization." Most men are in the bondage, and 
 civilization ought to be careful of its faithful servants. 
 " Mon devoir, d moi, c'est de conserver." 
 
 It was decreed that man should earn his bread by the 
 " sweat of his brow." The great desire of the age is to live 
 -without labor. The youth regrets that he is not bom to 
 fortune ; the young man wants the easiest and the most 
 genteel employment, if, indeed, necessity urges him to in- 
 dustry. These are delusions. Men who evade the decree 
 have no reason for self-gratulation. Health, contentment, 
 respectability, depend upon work, in some form, whether of 
 mind or body, or both. No man will lead a contented life 
 without useful occupation. Very often, however, a young 
 man, when fairly in the traces, will go beyond the line of 
 safety. He will overwork himself for ambition or gain. 
 
THE YOUNG MAN. 55 
 
 He wants to be wealthy, and makes haste to grow rich. 
 He will hurry at his meals, shorten his sleep, worry his 
 mind with anxious speculations, and give his whole thought 
 to addition, subtraction, fractions, interest. In a few years 
 pecuniary success may reward him, but it will not compen- 
 sate him. By the time he gets his money, he will have 
 nothing else worth living for. If predisposed to pulmonary 
 disease, it will be developed ; otherwise, his stomach will 
 be a perpetual memento to him of his error. The knight 
 of La Mancha was not hallucinated when he said the 
 health of the whole body was tempered in the laboratory 
 of the stomach. His nervous system will be disordered, 
 and the idleness of acquired wealth will probably enough 
 lead to melancholy, and melancholy may lead to suicide. 
 It is a remarkable fact, withal, that rich men are often 
 haunted by a spectre of poverty threatening them in ad- 
 vanced life ; whereas men who have known only poverty 
 fear not the reality, much less its shadow. 
 
 It takes labor and rest, each in its proper degree, to re- 
 lieve each other, and to give zest to life. They are as much 
 corollaries as pleasure and pain. 
 
 The temptations that beset a young man are numerous 
 and fearful. Often enough a demon besets him under the 
 form which so troubled the peace of St. Anthony. If he 
 withstand not the temptation, a blight may fall upon him 
 that will make his own life miserable, and transmit the seeds 
 of disease and death to all of his posterity. 
 
 Society with its ambitions and vanities has overreached 
 itself. A young man with a small income fears to venture 
 upon marriage because, forsooth, young ladies of social posi- 
 tion require more than he can give, not indeed for the ne- 
 cessaries of life, but for its ostentations. Then he should 
 seek one for a wife who is willing to share his modest for- 
 tunes, and to be to him a helpmeet. Marriage, with a good 
 woman, is an invaluable agency in moral and physical con- 
 servatism. Of the eminent philosophers who have passed 
 
56 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 their opinions upon this matter, two give opposite opinions, 
 as philosophers usually do. Dr. Johnson approved of rather 
 late marriage ; Dr. Franklin of early marriage. The Ameri- 
 can was right, so far as the general rule goes. God and Na- 
 ture have decreed for most men early marriage ; and the 
 young man should look to its accomplishment in the be- 
 ginning of his career. The very prospect of it is conserva- 
 tive. When a young man sees a maiden whom he can love, 
 and respect, and trust, he ought to let her know it, not 
 lightly, but earnestly. Betrothal itseK, where there is any 
 moral principle, is a great safeguard. 
 
 A learned German writer says that in the ages of chiv- 
 alry the true knight " bore in his heart the image of his 
 beloved object, whether real or imaginary ; and this roman- 
 tic love, this indissoluble attachment, was the shield of his 
 continence and virtue, strengthened the powers of his body, 
 and communicated to his mind courage and unalterable 
 resolution, by continually directing his attention to his fair 
 one smiling to him at a distance, and whose favor could 
 be gained only by glorious achievements. . . . The passion 
 of love, which in those periods was a security against dis- 
 sipation, is at present the source of the greatest ; the virtue 
 of chastity, the principal foundation, without doubt, of 
 moral firmness and manliness of character, has become a 
 subject of ridicule, and is decried as an old-fashioned pedan- 
 try. , . . Nature excites the propensity to love, not truly 
 to afford subjects for romance or to make a figure in the 
 ecstatic raptures of poetry, but that it may serve as an in- 
 dissoluble bond to unite two hearts, to lay the grounds for 
 a happy generation ; and that, by this magic tie, our exist- 
 ence may be connected with the first and most sacred of all 
 duties." — (Huf eland, "Art of Prolonging Life.") 
 
 The twenty-fifth birthday should find the young man 
 and the young woman united for life in the holy bonds of 
 wedlock. 
 
 Purity, mental and physical, should ever be cherished. 
 
THE YOUNG MAN. 57 
 
 The writer whom we have just quoted, speaking merely as 
 a hygeist, says the German youth of old did not contem- 
 plate marriage until the age of full maturity ; " and yet 
 nothing was known then of the pernicious consequences of 
 this chastity, nor of many other imaginary evils of which 
 people now dream ; but these youths, increasing in strength 
 as well as growth, became men who by their size excited 
 the astonishment even of the Romans." 
 
 Restraints are ever necessary for the preservation of 
 good moral or physical condition. " Libidinosa etenim, et 
 intemperans adoleseentia effoetum corpus tradit senectuti," 
 says Cicero. Immoral people, of the unmarried especially, 
 .not only injure themselves, but they are capable of spread- 
 ing desolation to an extent only known to physicians even 
 throughout the best-ordered communities. They are the 
 enemies of the human race. 
 
 The allurement of alcohol is in full activity at this 
 period of life. It is impossible to tell how many minds 
 and bodies are annually wrecked by its agency. Every 
 observant medical man sees its ravages, and he sees at the 
 same time the unreliability of statistics upon this matter. 
 There are two sources of error : the one, that its most vio- 
 lent opponents use exaggerations to enforce their argu- 
 ments ; and the other, that it breaks down numbers of men 
 insidiously, who are by no means dranjiards, and who never 
 scandalize the community by gross excesses. The nearest 
 friends of these men frequently see no relation of cause and 
 effect between alcohol and broken health, or early death, 
 but the physician does see the relations. While preparing 
 these pages the writer was called in consultation to see a 
 very vigorous-looking man, a spirit-dealer, suffering with a 
 severe attack of facial erysipelas. No one had ever seen 
 the man drunk, though he was known to drink pretty freely ; 
 and his general reputation was good. Erysipelas, except in 
 foul hospitals, is rarely a dangerous disease, but when the 
 writer learned that this powerful-looking man had been 
 
58 HEALTH, AKD HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 drinking wHskey freely every day for years, though he had 
 not had at any time a day's illness, his prognosis was very 
 unfavorable : remedies proved useless, and the man died in 
 a few days. 
 
 When the goodly-looking ship Metropolis went to sea a 
 few months ago, the first storm made a hopeless wreck of 
 her. There were no outward indications of rottenness with- 
 in, but it was there, and the first shock sent her to the bot- 
 tom. Human wrecks of like character are familiar enough 
 to every practising physician. 
 
 The young man who would be safe, in person, reputa- 
 tion, and business, should keep clear of drinking-houses. 
 He should neither "treat" nor "be treated." If this ab- 
 surd and pernicious custom were abolished, there would be 
 very soon a marvelous " shrinkage " in intemperance and 
 all its attendant evils. 
 
 Alcohol and tobacco will be more fully considered in 
 subsequent pages. 
 
 As to general habits our young man should always keep 
 some kind of parity between the occupation of the body 
 and the mind. The clerk and the scholar should recreate 
 by walking, riding, gardening, or using the axe ; the work- 
 ing mechanic or farmer should recreate with instructive 
 books, whether relating to his own pursuits or to more 
 general information. Many men, by-the-way, waste a great 
 deal of time with books which might be better employed. 
 " To spend too much time in studies is sloth," says Lord 
 Bacon, and certainly irrelevant reading, or giving time to 
 reading that ought to be used in action, is a very common 
 form of sloth. Bacon also says, " There is no stand or im- 
 pediment La the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies, 
 like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises." 
 In this working world, wit is not the most valuable com- 
 modity for common use, not equal to gold, says Ovid : 
 
 " Ingenium quondam fuerat pretiosins auro, 
 Nunc est barbaries grandis habere nihil." 
 
THE TOUNG WOMAN. 59 
 
 And in much more recent times it was George Primrose's 
 experience that wit was less esteemed in Paris than money. 
 Steady, honest work, without excessive drudgery, duly 
 alternated with rest and wholesome recreation, is the great 
 desideratum. 
 
 Section 2. — The Young Woman. 
 
 Woman is in her glory from twenty to forty years of 
 age. If endowed with original good stamina, and well 
 cared for up to twenty, she is ready to take her place by 
 the side of her stronger companion, and to enter upon the 
 most important duties of her life. 
 
 " UH tu Oaius, ego Caia," she may say with honest 
 pride, and without presumption. Where he is peer, she is 
 peeress ; it may be, peerless. 
 
 In regard to health-matters, married or unmarried, she 
 ought to avoid luxurious indolence on the one hand, and 
 overtaxing her forces, physical or mental, on the other. If 
 she lead an industrial life, or indeed only has the ordinary 
 cares of a household, there are times when she needs a cer- 
 tain amount of repose. She cannot safely keep up uni- 
 formity of any trying occupation as a man may. For 
 physiological reasons the hygienics of her life ought to be 
 more or less directed by her medical adviser. Taking ad- 
 vice under the circumstances does not imply taking medi- 
 cine. 
 
 Supposing her to enter upon the connubial state, good 
 sound health of mind and body is of the extremest impor- 
 tance. Her career is necessarily a trying one, even if so 
 endowed. Though not the bread-winner, she is the central 
 figure of the domestic circle. Her life, her health, hor 
 moral and physical well-being, are not for herself alone, 
 but for others, even for generations yet unborn. 
 
 If she be vigorous and healthy, the. presumption is in 
 favor of her children being so likewise. They are not only 
 bone of her bdne and flesh of her flesh, but, to a very great 
 
60 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 extent, their whole character is modeled and made by hers. 
 It is said that great men are always the sons of superior 
 women, and as a rule the saying is true. Even the unborn 
 child takes most of its attributes from her. The greatest 
 care and watchfulness are, therefore, necessary during her 
 whole child-hearing term. Then the newly-born child is 
 intrusted to her sacred keeping, and she ought to be fully 
 equal to the charge. If she were always so, the multitude 
 of "infant-foods" so bountifully offered to the public, be- 
 cause of the incapacity of so many mothers, might all be 
 turned over to the poor, unfortunate waifs in the infant asy- 
 lums. The mother is to be pitied who cannot nurse her 
 child, and to be blamed who will not. God and Nature 
 make her, in the married state, rejoice in her maternity, 
 "matrem filiorum loBtantem ;''^ art and fashion have no 
 right to change her. 
 
 While a woman is in full maturity, and in the most at- 
 tractive time of her life, the formed woman, and no longer 
 gii-1 or child, and not yet having passed the meridian of 
 life, or beginning to feel that age is laying its impress 
 upon her, though never so lightly, a beneficent Providence 
 fits her eminently for great duties. It is said that man 
 proposes and God disposes. Yet sometime^ this seems to 
 be reversed. God would fit her for her wSrk, and man, or 
 herself it may be, too often frustrates the great design. 
 There is too great a departure from natural laws. On the 
 one hand, the votary of pleasure or fashion sacrifices her- 
 self, and her children or her hopes of children. On the 
 other hand, overwork, as stated in the " Song of the Shirt," 
 leaves no time, nor thought, nor capacity, for the pleasing 
 duties of maternal life. Society has its slaves as civilization 
 has its slaves. In the extremes, the woman's part is frus- 
 trated, and thence often, even when there are many reasons 
 for the preservation, occurs the extinction of families. 
 
 It is a happy mean in which the young matron responds 
 to the bounteous gifts bestowed upon her, and offers to 
 
THE YOUNG WOMAN. 61 
 
 society contributions in her healthy children, healthy by 
 inheritance and culture, and healthy in morals from her 
 instruction and example. 
 
 It may be withal that the young woman, whether maid, 
 wife, or widow, may be the bread-winner, and she should 
 be prepared from early life for a certain degree of inde- 
 pendence. There are now many thousands of our fair coun- 
 trywomen who have to deplore, not the want of education, 
 as ordinarily understood, but the want of the kind of edu- 
 cation that would have fitted them for earning subsistence. 
 This usually requires physical as much as intellectual ability. 
 If qualified, mentally, for teaching, for example, even this 
 resource fails them if not sustained by good or even robust 
 health. The same may be said of living by the pen or 
 by any intellectual pursuit. Such occupations require good 
 health, but do not confer it. The " valiant woman " must 
 needs carry this element of success with her. More pains 
 have been taken, unfortunately, in the past to deprive our 
 educated women of it than to secure it to them. The fu- 
 ture, let us trust, when wisdom and knowledge may be in 
 closer alliance, will treat them more generously and more 
 justly. Some preparation should be usually made for ap- 
 propriate industrial pursuits. Some of the sex claim to be 
 eminently strong-minded, but, above the peasant-class, we 
 do not hear that any are supposed to be strong-bodied. 
 While among the gentler sex our own would wish to see no 
 " mannish woman," we would have diffused among them an 
 improved physique for their individual good, as well as for 
 the good of all who derive from them. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MAN.— THE WOMAN. 
 
 Section 1. — The Man. 
 
 " Every man is a fool or a physician at forty." 
 
 The man who reaches forty safely usually understands 
 pretty well his own requirements, and about this time he 
 may he nearly independent of physic and physicians. He 
 is equally removed from the perturbations of growth and 
 development, and the worn-down and degenerative condi- 
 tion of age. He is pretty well established in business, and 
 he has a fair idea of what his relations may be with his 
 fellow-men. Altogether he is just in his prime, in mental, 
 physical, and moral force. Before the days of steamships, 
 the captain of a vessel bound for the East Indies used to 
 strike for the "trade-winds," where he could run for a 
 considerable portion of his voyage upon an even keel before 
 the friendly breeze, " without stiiTing tack or sheet," as 
 Jack used to say. In the voyage of life our well-preserved 
 man of forty may move on so equably in health-matters 
 that for ten years there may not be wear and tear enough 
 to cause appreciable deterioration. That this may be so 
 we must assume that he is "temperate in all things." He 
 must be no glutton nor wine-bibber ; no reprobate, sensu- 
 alist, gambler. His passions, which always exist, and are 
 always active — for in life he will never be unimpassioned 
 like the marble effigy on the monument — are not-to be ex- 
 tinguished, but they are to be kept in subjection. As true 
 gentleman, which he may be consistently with any honest 
 
THE MAN. 63 
 
 occupation, he ought to cultivate all gentle habits, and to 
 promote peace and good-will throughout his surroundings. 
 The consciousness of doing good to others tranquilizes a 
 man's mind, and conduces to his own health and content- 
 ment ; the consciousness of doing wrong and injury to 
 others, no matter what the apparent gain to the individual, 
 will surely bring a recoil to his own detriment. 
 
 He ought to be a good working man, and make an 
 honest effort to improve his fortunes. A reasonable success 
 makes life comparatively cheerful. " The hand of the dili- 
 gent maketh rich," and "health, peace, and competence," 
 are well associated. But competence does not signify super- 
 fluous riches. These add to men's cares and detract from 
 their contentment. Diligence should be relieved with recre- 
 ation. A British statesman once asserted that no man ever 
 failed who worked seven days in the week. He may not 
 faU, indeed, in getting some special object, it may be wealth, 
 but in every other sense he will fail, and fall, prematurely. 
 The seventh day's rest, decreed by supernal wisdom, is an 
 absolute necessity for human welfare. It has been said, 
 with force and truth, that when the "conscientious man 
 husbands one day of his existence every week — who, instead 
 of allowing Sunday to be trampled and torn in the hurry 
 and scramble of life, treasures it up — the Lord of Sunday 
 keeps it for him, and in length of days the hale of age gives 
 it back with usury. The savings-bank of human existence 
 is the weekly Sunday." The philosophers who tried to 
 rob humanity of this beneficent day of rest and praise were 
 simply madmen. 
 
 It was the prayer of the wise man that he should neither 
 be tried with poverty nor riches. This implied equal free- 
 dom from crushing adversity or unbounded prosperity. All 
 experience shows how sorely these extremes touch our race. 
 But so surely as we have to bear varying degrees of tem- 
 perature — from cold that may benumb us to a fatal sleep, 
 to heat that cuts off existence by coup de soleil — just so 
 
64 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 surely are we liable, at all ages, to the Ticissitudes of for- 
 tune, and just as dangerous are they to human welfare. 
 Sudden and vast changes of condition, like sudden changes 
 of temperature, are most trying. What man has ever be- 
 come suddenly rich, which so many desire, without being 
 the worse for it ? If there be one, he is a rare exception. 
 The fall from riches to poverty, while the man is in his 
 vigor, is much the safer of these variations. The rational 
 man should keep from such trials as far as he may. Tips 
 and downs, adversity, vicissitudes, are necessary to the for- 
 mation of a strong and sterling character, and the man 
 should bear them with fortitude, but he should use all pru- 
 dent measures to keep from extremes ; and, as the rule, his 
 well-directed efforts will insure his safety. 
 
 Profit and loss are very commonly, in every sense, vis-d- 
 vis. One always wishes gain, but, as Dr. Richardson says, 
 truly, those " who live for gain alone are among the acutest 
 physical sufferers of the world. Every penny earned by 
 excess of hard strain for it is grasped at a cost of vital 
 power that never comes back. Disorganized heart, disor- 
 ganized brain, are the physical evils with which the prize, 
 when it comes, is won." 
 
 Our rational man, from forty to sixty, should be a good 
 worker, mentally and physically, but not a slave to gain. 
 He is entitled to rest, recreation, amusement, and these he 
 ought to enjoy, with wife, children, and friends. 
 
 SectiojS' 2. — The Woman-. 
 
 " She looketh well to the waya of her household, and eateth not the 
 bread of idleness. »Her children arise up, and call her blessed ; her hus- 
 band also, and he praiseth her." 
 
 The counterpart to the man must be the woman, if we 
 may use a plain word which still holds its place in Holy 
 Writ, and in the marriage contract. The woman of forty 
 is not very different from the woman of thirty in physical 
 condition. She now, if ever, represents the better half of 
 
THE WOMAN. 65 
 
 our race, for slie is in the full bloom of maturity, in all that 
 goes to make up the loveliness of a fine woman. At twenty 
 she -was but a grown-up child, with hopes and aspirations 
 for herself alone ; at forty she is, or may be, the matronly 
 guardian of children, in all of whose hopes, fears, anticipa- 
 tions, and prospects, she is but little less interested, and 
 usually more wisely interested, than they are themselves. 
 In the wife of forty, character is fully developed and re- 
 vealed. If equal to her condition, young men and maidens 
 look up to her as a model ; the young man would like to 
 have just such a wife. With the best discretion, matrimony 
 is something of a lottery, and it takes time and circum- 
 stances to show what kind of a prize has been drawn, if 
 any. When a youth is thrust upon the world, its rough 
 handling makes him foreshow pretty early what will be the 
 development ; but a young maiden, in her seclusion, rarely 
 can show, or has any occasion to show, what manner of 
 woman she may become. 
 
 Our model woman ought to be a fairly early riser, to 
 start her household in well-adjusted order for the day. It 
 was one of Dr. Franklin's wise sayings that, when work got 
 behindhand in the morning, it could not be overtaken in 
 the evening. Order tends to economize health as well as 
 time. There is no domestic discipline without it, there is 
 no satisfaction in a house where it does not prevail. Early 
 rising requires that evenings and nights shall be spent ra- 
 tionally, not in revelry or dissipation. The evening may 
 be very properly given to society ; but, when night after 
 night is sacrificed to society-life, the best interests of the 
 family are sacrificed at the same time. 
 
 The orderly woman has time for mental culture ; if she 
 takes time for it without order in her household, she will 
 find herself one of a very unhappy class of women. By 
 beginning early in the morning she may so dispose of her 
 time as to give certain hours to domestic duties, certain 
 hours to society, certain hours to culture and recreation. 
 
66 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 The duties of a true Christian matron may be interblended 
 with all others. Religion, moral, physical, and mental cult- 
 ure, may be made to run so evenly together that, so far 
 from clashing or interfering, each promotes and adorns the 
 other. 
 
 There are many reasons why prudent habits should pre- 
 vail at this time of life. As previously said, the female or- 
 ganization, always more impressible than that of the male, 
 requires not only a general but a special hygiene. Between 
 ten and twenty years of age, evolution requires particular 
 care ; and womanhood, in its development ranging about 
 from fifteen to forty-five years, with more or less latitude, 
 is subject to physiological laws of the greatest importance, 
 affecting the interests of the individual and of the race. 
 Another important term is now approaching. Between 
 forty and fifty years occurs a very critical term — temps 
 critique, or dge de retour, as the French call it. These 
 various changes are physiological ; that is, they occur prop- 
 erly in the natural order, but they are easily deranged, so 
 as to become pathological, and natural order is thus sup- 
 planted by unnatural disorder, which is in these days ap- 
 parently more the rule than the exception. 
 
 There is no reason in Nature why the dge de retour, 
 or the " change of life," should be attended with danger, or 
 with derangement of health, but it usually is so. As Dr. 
 Tilt says touching this matter, there ought to be a knowl- 
 edge of the reality of the dangers ; and, furthermore, a 
 conviction that these dangers can, for the most part, he 
 avoided by a judicious line of conduct. 
 
 In speaking of dangers, it is by no means asserted that 
 mortality is greatly increased at this time. And, indeed, 
 while this term has its dangers, it has its compensations 
 also in removing many sources of danger. The revolution 
 effected is often a very salutary one. Nevertheless the 
 term has its attendant dangers, which rather impair health 
 than immediately threaten life. Certain periodical sympa- 
 
THE WOMAN. 67 
 
 thetic or reflex disturbances may become greatly aggra- 
 vated. The nervous centres may be much disordered. 
 Heaviness in the head, dimness of the eyes, a bewildered 
 feeling, and sometimes the semblance of intoxication (^pseu- 
 do-narcotism), are observed by the sufferer or her friends. 
 An increase of anomalous or fugitive pains, spinal, hypo- 
 gastric, or in the lower limbs, is very common. 
 
 Ganglionic Symptoms. — " Am I wrong," says Dr. Tilt, 
 "in referring the following symptoms more particularly to 
 that nervous system, the filaments of which, like a web, en- 
 velop the smallest arterial vessel in their inextricable mazes ? 
 Sensations of faintness, exhaustion, and sinking, often re- 
 ferred to the epigastric region, heats and flushes, perspira- 
 tions, drenching sweats," the last of which, at least, have a 
 salutary influence by giving a sort of vicarious relief. 
 
 Pelvic plethora is very common, which may find relief 
 in hsemorrhoidal discharges, in diarrhoea, or other flux, which 
 gives the whole organism time to recover its equilibrium. 
 The disturbances likely to take place at this time are very 
 numerous, but they are for the most part " more annoying 
 than dangerous." Formidable organic diseases may indeed 
 supervene, but they are to be considered for the most part 
 post, not propter, a change which all women must undergo 
 at a certain time of life. Coincident and consecutive dis- 
 eases are often attributed to this change without suflScient 
 reason. 
 
 The prudent and well-ordered life previously to this 
 great change is least disturbed by it. But few women, in 
 the higher classes at least, approach it who have not suffered 
 from one or many deteriorating agencies, whether avoid- 
 able or unavoidable. Their childhood, youth, early woman- 
 hood, and maturity, have, in many instances, all been mis- 
 managed. Some have had too much schooling (not too 
 much learning), some not enough ; some have had too 
 much work or privation ; some too much ease or luxury ; 
 some too much mental, some too much physical strain ; 
 
68 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 some not use enough of their faculties to give them de- 
 velopment ; some have been slaves to society, some to do- 
 mestic drudgery ; some have only exercised in easy car- 
 riages to rest after their fatigue upon the softest beds or 
 couches ; others have trudged upon their weary limbs, stand- 
 ing, vralking, or running the treadmill known as the sewing- 
 machine, until the limbs not only give way, but send reflex 
 disorder or disease to vital centres. Some are run down 
 with the physical cares given to children ; and some, alas ! 
 exempt from this source of exhaustion, by the heart-aches 
 caused by the errors, or it may be the crimes, of their un- 
 happy offspring promising to bring down their gray hairs 
 in sorrow and humiliation to the grave. She is a rare 
 woman of five-and-forty who has not her own sorrow, it 
 may even be unto death, or it may be only chastening. 
 
 The past she cannot remedy, but the present she may 
 usually to some extent control. She may so regulate her 
 life that there shall be no new perturbation. Prudence, 
 fortitude, justice, and temperance, will ever be trusty 
 guides. 
 
 Emerging safely from the change she starts upon a 
 somewhat new basis. JSonio sum; many troubles and 
 trials have ceased ; she walks now for a time by her lord, 
 not so strong as he, perhaps, but at least as free from in- 
 firmities. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DECLINING OR OLD MAN. 
 "Mens enim, et ratio, et consilium, in senibua est." 
 
 Cato tlie Elder makes the superior ■wisdom of age 
 more than compensate for the vigor and pleasures of 
 youth. Men ought not to be such fools, he says, as to 
 complain of that part of life 'which they have always 
 desired so earnestly to reach. He would have some- 
 thing of the gravity of age in the young man, and some- 
 thing of the vivacity of youth in the old man, so that 
 his mind may not grow infirm as the body grows old : 
 " Quod qui sequitur, corpore senex esse poterit, aninto 
 nunquam erit." 
 
 The man of sixty is beginning to grow old bodily, but 
 his intellectual faculties, if they have been fairly treated, 
 are as sound comparatively as his physical forces were at 
 forty. The avenues to his intelligence are, it is true, be- 
 coming somewhat obstructed. He will not be so quick to 
 learn as in times past, but the highest faculties, mens, ratio, 
 consilium, are but just fully mature. He ought to be a 
 wiser and a better man than ever ; introspective, and retro- 
 spective. It is to be hoped that in the retrospect he vdll 
 not feel like Lord Chesterfield, who said that his life seemed 
 to have passed in frivolous hurry and bustle, like a wild 
 dream caused by opium, from another dose of which he 
 would turn away with disgust. 
 
 At threescore and ten, life comes to its natural close, 
 says the Psalmist, Pythagoras allows fourscore years, and 
 
70 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 Dr. Richardson generously concedes ten more years to a 
 strong frame well preserved. During all these years " the 
 steady attraction of the earth is ever telling upon the liv- 
 ing body." The vital force resists, but at length "there 
 comes a time when this resistance begins to fail, so that 
 the earth, which never for a moment loses her grasp, com- 
 mences and continues to prevail, and after a struggle, 
 extended from twenty to thirty years (from sixty to 
 ninety), conquers, bringing the exhausted organism, which 
 has daily approached nearer and nearer to her dead self, 
 into her dead bosom." 
 
 There are men wise in their own conceit, who tell us 
 that this is the final end of man, or, in other words, that 
 human life has no destiny but death, no object but an 
 eternal sleep ! Death's head and cross-bones do not make a 
 pleasant emblem to contemplate, yet this is all they would 
 offer us ! 
 
 Age has its proper system of hygiene. The declining 
 man is willing to look on feats of strength and agility 
 as a spectator, rather than take part as an actor. Yet 
 he will by no means give himself up to physical inertia. 
 He may walk, ride, drive, pursue his usual occupations, 
 cum modo, indeed, with discretion ; but he must not re- 
 tire, as it is called, from useful pursuits. He may, if he 
 please, sell his ship and buy a farm, but then he must 
 look to the kine and the cabbages. He may plan and im- 
 prove ; pull down an old tenant-house, and put up a new 
 one on improved sanitary principles, so that from cellar 
 to roof-tree there shall be no lurking-place for any germ 
 of disease. 
 
 Personally and individually he is less liable to acute 
 disease than when younger. He is indeed getting to be 
 somewhat calcareous ; his bones and joints are getting an 
 undue proportion of earthy matter, with a proportionate 
 loss or induration of animal matter ; he is getting less 
 flexible, and as he gets further advanced, a misstep on 
 
THE DECLINING OR OLD MAN. 71 
 
 the stairs or a fall on the ice may cause a broken bone, 
 while in middle life it would have produced only a tri- 
 fling bruise. He generally avoids such accidents by be- 
 coming, unconsciously it may be, more careful in all his 
 movements. He does not attempt to go down the stairs 
 at a bound like his grandson, nor to jump on every ice- 
 surface he encounters for a slide. He shakes his head 
 with a grave smile at the pert boy who invites him to 
 attempt such gymnastics. 
 
 Earth reaches the bones of his chest as well as the bones 
 of his limbs. His ribs become indurated, and their once 
 flexible cartilages become so firm as to interfere with the 
 freedom of respiration. Herein he finds another reason for 
 cautious and leisurely movements. He breathes well enough 
 when not hurried or excited, but with distress if he at- 
 tempts haste. He may hot run half a square to overtake 
 a street car, he may not take any John Gilpin ride, he may 
 not climb a volcanic mountain to see the crater, nor to a 
 lofty belfry for a view of the city. 
 
 Earth, not stopping at the outworks, encroaches upon 
 the vitals too. It may take hold of the valves of the heart, 
 or convert the once beautifully flexible arteries, in parts, 
 into tubes almost as brittle as old-fashioned pipe-stems, 
 which will snap for trivial causes, and let the blood-current 
 escape, it may be, into the parenchyma of some vital 
 organ. 
 
 The common mother is indeed taking gradual possession 
 of that part of the man which belongs to her ; she may be, 
 and often is, encroaching little by little for a score or more 
 of years. She has no need fo make haste ; he will surely be 
 hers in due time, which she will not anticipate, though he 
 often does, by late or early errors, whether his own or those 
 of his forefathers. 
 
 Most of the tissues undergo degradation — that is, pass 
 from a higher to a lower degree of vitality. The heart be- 
 comes weak or fatty, and carries on its functions feebly. 
 
72 HEALTH, Als^D HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 An inexperienced examiner miglit readily mistake a sen- 
 sation of resistance from indurated arteries for an in- 
 dication of a strong pulse or a vigorous circulation, while 
 the very reverse obtains in fact, and the circulation is 
 failing. 
 
 The brain gradually becomes degenerate also. It un- 
 dergoes waste and change, and the cerebral cells lose the 
 definition proper to them when in full vigor. That brain 
 "which some consider the soul's frail dwelling-place" be- 
 comes like a worn-out instrument of music. The performer 
 may preside over the harp with the inspiration and skill of 
 former years, but its worn or broken strings will no longer 
 " the soul of music shed." It wUl give for a while uncertain 
 notes, more and more discordant and inharmonious, before 
 becoming altogether mute. 
 
 As the brain, or more generally the nervous system, pre- 
 sides over all living organs and their functions, it follows 
 that its impairment implies universal deterioration. The 
 digestive organs, all engaged in secretion and excretion — in 
 other words, all upon which the functional activity of life 
 depends — work sluggishly or irregularly. " He is not the 
 man he used to be," is habitually said of the elderly or 
 declining man by the observers about him, before the in- 
 firmities of age have withdrawn him from active pursuits. 
 He may be silently making to himself the same acknowl- 
 edgment. Though less subject to acute disease than in 
 earlier life, infirmities multiply upon him. He is prob- 
 ably rheumatic, gouty, or subject to fluxes, as to bron- 
 chorrhcea, or catarrhus senilis. He is sensitive to cold, 
 and should not be exposed to its depressing influence, as 
 he can no longer resist it by active exertion. When a 
 young man is threatened with internal congestion from 
 passive exposure to cold, he may warm and save himself 
 by a little vigorous exercise, but his grandfather has not 
 this resource ; his low vitality must be saved by artificial 
 warmth. 
 
THE DECLINING OR OLD MAN. 73 
 
 The man is not what he used to be ; involution has taken 
 the place of evolution, and our veteran is assuredly " home- 
 ward bound." But even in his decline there is a kind of 
 conservatism. Infirmity is something of a safeguard. In- 
 deed, all through life, how often do we see people of infirm 
 or delicate stamina outliving the most robust, simply be- 
 cause infirmity often gives notes of warning, and enforces; 
 it may be, lessons of seK-restraint ! And thus, as Huf eland 
 says, a man in advanced life, with his powers lessened, 
 would finish his career sooner, were it not for the adapta- 
 tions of age. 
 
 " This position, which appears to be somewhat paradox- 
 ical, is confirmed by the following explanation ; Man, dur- 
 ing the period of old age, has a much smaller provision of 
 vital power, and a much less capacity for restoration. If 
 he lived with the same activity and vigor as before, 
 this provision would be much sooner exhausted, and death 
 would soon be the consequence. Now the character of age 
 lessens the natural irritability and sensibility of the body, 
 by which the effects of internal as well as external ir- 
 ritation, and consequently the exertion and wasting of 
 the powers, are also lessened ; and on this account, as 
 consumption is less, he can with such a stock of powers 
 hold out much longer. The decrease of the intensity of 
 the vital processes, as age increases, prolongs, therefore, 
 vital duration." 
 
 The man learns to accommodate himself to his condition. 
 Having lost his teeth, entirely or partially, he takes to food 
 which does not require great mastication. The use of arti- 
 ficial teeth, of late years so universal, is, by-the-way, greatly 
 promotive of health and longevity. We have seen chronic 
 dyspepsia and its attendant evils quite remedied by the re- 
 moval of defective old teeth and the insertion of good sets 
 of artificial teeth. 
 
 But, in declining age, the gastric powers are also defec- 
 tive ; and. although good teeth exert the most beneficial 
 8 
 
74 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PEOMOTE IT. 
 
 influence, still the stomach requires careful management. 
 Treating of stomachic and labyrinthine vertigo, Dr. Woakes 
 says, in a late number of the American Journal of Medi- 
 cal Sciences: "It would seem that Nature had in the 
 labyrinth erected a signal-box in which a note of warn- 
 ing might be sounded by the much-abused though toler- 
 ant viscus, the stomach, whenever the ill-t^tment it is 
 subjected to threatens to compromise more vital parts of 
 the organism. It would seem to teach us, what the ac- 
 quired wisdom of advancing years so often fails to do, 
 that the senile stomach is not the fit receptacle of unmas- 
 ticated meat ; that it resents the slight shown it in this, 
 and, of course, in many other ways — first of all by warn- 
 ing attacks of giddiness, which, if not heeded, will shortly 
 culminate in a fall. It was by such a catastrophe that 
 the Duke of Wellington lost his life — the unscathed hero 
 of a hundred fights failed to prove himself master of the 
 situation when the forces arrayed against him were a 
 vigorous appetite and an acutely-sympathetic labyrinthine 
 circulation." 
 
 The defective innervation of the stomach cannot, of 
 course, be cured by improved mastication, but its failing 
 capabilities Avill be less severely tried, and thence conserva- 
 tism of vital power to an extent readily appreciable. "We 
 heard but the other day of an elderly gentleman, an octo- 
 genarian, suffering from vertiginous affections — a stomacho 
 loBso, probably — who was greatly relieved by the free use 
 of capsicum. The spice acted as a spur to the sluggish 
 gastric nerves. 
 
 A man, of fair inheritance, who has done justice to him- 
 self, ought not to be very old under eighty years of age. 
 When Adam, now almost fourscore, offered to follow Or- 
 lando, he strongly urged his fitness : 
 
 " Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; 
 For in my youth I never did apply 
 
THE DECLINING OR OLD MAN. 75 
 
 Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood ; 
 Nor did with unbashful forehead woo 
 The means of weakness and debility ; 
 Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, 
 Frosty but kindly : let me go with you, 
 I'U do the service of a younger man, 
 In all your business and necessities." 
 
 The good old man herein gave a text for younger men 
 ■who would not grow old before their time, as so many do. 
 Hufeland, speaking of young men prematurely old, says he 
 dissected one scarcely forty years of age, gray-haired, and 
 with the cartilages of the ribs totally ossified, as in extreme 
 old age. 
 
 This writer gives some rules for getting through life 
 speedily, or of becoming old by a hastening or high-pressure 
 process. Thus the aspirant must attain to maturity as fast 
 as possible, and waste vital power in sensual pleasures, as a 
 spendthrift does riches, without stint. He must undergo 
 excessive fatigue, no matter if he work all day and dance 
 all night. He must drink abundance of wine and strong 
 liquors. He must encourage the depressing passions — care, 
 fear, sorrow. He must use not only cold bathing, but take 
 prolonged cold baths. 
 
 A great deal may be accomplished, undoubtedly, by such 
 agencies, but the wi'iter just quoted prudently suggests 
 that they are offered as warnings of what should be avoided. 
 Many act, indeed, as if they were right rules, but they are 
 only such for the ways of destruction. 
 
 As the real old man approaches the last scene of all, the 
 breaking-up is general, not partial. He loses superfluous fat, 
 but morbid or misplaced fat, fatty degeneration, no matter 
 how wasted his muscles, is often extensive. It is subject 
 to inspection in the eye, where it forms a whitish border 
 known as the arcus or circulus senilis. This is commonly 
 taken by physicians as an indication of what is going on 
 within. It often tends to explain the enfeebled action of 
 
76 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 the heart. While some parts are becoming unduly softened, 
 in vital organs it may he, as in the heart or the brain, others 
 become abnormally dry or hardened. Dr. Richardson says 
 that the gradual transformation of the vital organs of the 
 body, from the advance of age, is due to a change in the col- 
 loidal matter which forms the organic basis of all the living 
 tissues. In its active state this substance is combined with 
 water, by which its activity and flexibility are maintained in 
 whatever organ it is present— brain, nerve, muscle, eye- 
 ball, cartilage, membrane. In course of time this combina- 
 tion with water is lessened, whereupon the vital tissues be- 
 come thickened or pectous. By attraction of cohesion the 
 organic particles are welded more closely together, until at 
 length the nervous matter loses its mobility, and the physi- 
 cal inertia is complete. 
 
 It may readily happen that, in one and the same organ, 
 morbid indurations and softenings may be found side by 
 side, or the one condition may pass to the other. 
 
 Some indurations are capable of giving a great deal of 
 distress by mechanical influence. The prostate gland at 
 the neck of the bladder causes one of the most distressing 
 infirmities of age, by induration so that it retards or hinders 
 the flow of a depurative excretion, the retention of which is 
 at once mechanically dangerous and chemically poisonous. 
 
 It will be seen that the infirmities of age are constantly 
 bordering upon disease, when medical or surgical aid must 
 be had. The hygeist only proposes aids to make the in- 
 firmities comparatively endurable, and to keep them, so far 
 as may be, from passing that border-line which they are 
 ever approaching. 
 
 It has been already said that the elderly or declining 
 man is not to yield to physical or mental inertia. The dolce 
 far niente is admissible at all ages as a respite from useful 
 occupation, but to give it a primary place in one's career is 
 a wof ul mistake. 
 
 Allowing eight hours for sleep, there are sixteen more 
 
THE DECLINING OR OLD MAN. 77 
 
 to be consumed every day in the use of the faculties. They 
 ought to be more or less apportioned according to the man's 
 pursuits or condition in life. An old lawyer thus adjusted 
 his time : 
 
 "Six hours to law, to soothing slumbers seven, 
 Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven." 
 
 Whatever the subdivisions may be, as much time may 
 surely be given to work or useful occupation as to sleep. 
 Regular hours ought to be observed for sleep and meals ; 
 in fact, the elderly, more than a younger man, ought to 
 move as it were in grooves. There is a saying that one 
 hour's sleep before midnight is worth more than two after ; 
 this may apply at all ages, but especially at the time now 
 under consideration. With the young, exhaustion may be 
 followed by recuperation ; with the old, exhaustion should 
 be carefully avoided, as the recuperative powers are pretty 
 well worn out. 
 
 A man of studious and thoughtful habits may well keep 
 them up in his declining years. Pythagoras says virtue 
 consists in harmony between the passions and reason. 
 During the greater part of life these are in active antago- 
 nism, and it is difficult to bring them into harmony ; it 
 should not be so as age advances. If this be not with the 
 individual the age of reason, then he has none. Age, up to 
 a certain term, keeps the reasoning faculties in their integ- 
 rity while the passions are declining. It thus gives the 
 elderly man some advantages that he may appreciate and 
 use. He probably has a pretty good fund of aquirement, 
 which he may add to or renew. 
 
 "There is a tendency," says Prof. Bain, "in acquisitions 
 to decay, unless renewed. Hence a time must come in the 
 progress of acquisition when the whole available force of 
 growth is needed in order to conserve what we have already 
 got ; when, in fact, we are losing at one end as much as we 
 are gaining at the other. 
 
78 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 " It is further to be remarked that much of our improve- 
 ment in later life is the substitution of a better class of 
 judgments for our first immature notions, these last being 
 gradually dropped." — (" Mind and Body.") 
 
 There are a great many instances of new acquisitions 
 in advanced life, but no doubt it often happens as this 
 writer says : " The memory at last, if it does not refuse 
 new burdens, gives them place by letting go much that 
 has been previously learned. Moreover, a wide scholar- 
 ship turns into a knowledge of the places where knowl- 
 edge is." 
 
 That substitution of the better class of judgments is the 
 maturing of the wisdom of age. This is indeed the man's 
 age of reason, though far different from that of the insane 
 philosophers of the last century. " Tell us what we will 
 have in the coming days," said Condorcet to Cazotte ; " a 
 philosopher is not sorry to encounter a prophet." " For 
 you, M. Condorcet," was the reply, " you will die stretched 
 on the floor of a dungeon ; you will die of the poison that 
 you will be obliged to take in order to avoid the block — of 
 the poison which the happiness of that time will oblige you 
 to carry about with you." 
 
 Man has an intellectual and moral, as woman has a 
 physical, dge de retour. It is the time when reason, after a 
 long conflict, may quite predominate over the passions, or 
 at least over those which are most turbulent. It is a time 
 when thought and action should be above passion or preju- 
 dice, and happily it may merge in that space which it has 
 been said should intervene between the active business of 
 life and its close. 
 
 Our elderly man must " grow old gracefully," by con- 
 tinued culture of the mental and moral faculties, while he 
 keeps up so much of physical exertion as may be necessary 
 for the preservation, not for the increase, of the physical 
 powers. If a clever man, he may hold his own morally and 
 intellectually longer than physically ; but the reverse may 
 
THE DECLINING OR OLD MAN. 79 
 
 happen, so that the physical organism preserves not its in- 
 tegrity, indeed, but capability of action, when the higher 
 faculties are comparatively inert or exhausted. There are 
 always primary differences in men : from inheritance, tem- 
 perament, mental and physical constitution, and other con- 
 ditions or causes, cognizable or non-cognizable, which influ- 
 ence a man's whole existence from the cradle to the grave. 
 Education and habits modify the man, but they do not 
 make him. It is a philosophic dictum that we are what we 
 are by our organization in the first instance, and by in- 
 struction in the second. The first element is of course the 
 more invariable of the two. 
 
 The elderly man requires the comforts of a well-ordered 
 home. He wants regular meals, without fasting or feast- 
 ing: 
 
 " Let both extremes be banished from his walls, 
 Carthusian fasts and fulsome bacchanals." 
 
 He wants simple food, weU prepared, nutritious, and not 
 heavy. A glass of wine, a little wine, as the apostle says, 
 may be well for his stomach's sake. Wine is said to be 
 the milk of old age, and often it is beneficial, but no rule 
 can be made in regard to its use which is equally applicable 
 to all persons. It may be asserted that in mere debility a 
 little pure wine at dinner is beneficial, but where there is a 
 proneness to cerebral congestions or apoplexy, which is suffi- 
 ciently common in age, wine can only be exceptionally ad- 
 missible. The remedial use of wine or spirit is not now 
 discussed ; the passing reference made to it here is as a 
 form of food. As such, those who suggest its indiscrimi- 
 nate use, and those who would reject or forbid its use 
 altogether, are, in the opinion of the writer, equally wrong 
 in their extreme positions. 
 
 Mr. should have a sleeping apartment which is not 
 
 too close, nor yet subject to irregular draughts. The tem- 
 perature of the bedchamber should be tolerably uniform ; 
 
80 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 many hygeists suggest about 60° Fahr., but regard must 
 be had to tbe sensations of the individual most concerned. 
 One may sleep comfortably in a room at about that tem- 
 perature, but for most persons that would be too low for 
 passive exposure, as for reading or writing, though satis- 
 factory enough for moderate physical exertion. When 
 Mr. rises in the morning, and would take his sponge- 
 bath, the temperature of his room would not be at all too 
 high at 70° Fahr. 
 
 Passive exposure to cold at this age is very hazardous ; 
 and it is still more hazardous to rush suddenly from a very 
 cold to a very warm or heated atmosphere. The changes 
 should be gradual. Otherwise there is great danger of 
 deep visceral congestions, especially of the lungs. Inflam- 
 mation and fever readily ensue, with danger proportionate 
 to the enfeebled condition of the subject. Vernal vicissi- 
 tudes, especially when sudden warmth succeeds to severe 
 cold, or vice versa, are very fatal -to people advanced in 
 years, and especially to those who rashly presume upon 
 past powers of endurance. 
 
 When regular habits are spoken of, it must be under- 
 stood that they apply to throwing off effete material as 
 well as to taking in new supplies. All the gastro-intestinal 
 glands, whether secretory or absorbent, waste, and fail in 
 function with the progress of age. Thus Peyer's patches 
 become almost obliterated after middle life. There is loss 
 of muscular tone with attendant defective innervation. 
 Torpor of the bowels, atony, especially of the colon, or of 
 the entire large intestine, are rather the rule than the excep- 
 tion. Loss of propulsive force becomes more and more 
 marked, and, with blunted sensibilities, our subject, we had 
 nearly said patient, is apt to get careless and indifferent 
 as to the natural mode of relief. This should not be so. 
 Matters retained unduly undergo chemical changes and are 
 thereby capable of spreading infection throughout the whole 
 system, in addition to the local disorders which they pro- 
 
THE DECLINING OR OLD AGE. 81 
 
 duce. A regular effort should be made daily for relief, 
 soon after a meal being the best time, upon the principle, 
 as Trousseau expresses it, that one nail may be made to 
 force out another. Kneading, and the judicious use of 
 water, will help the cause ; these agencies failing, recourse 
 must be had to medicine, with medical advice ; for it is by 
 no means a matter of indifference what kind of purgatives 
 shall be used, even when this class of remedies is clearly 
 indicated. 
 
 The clothing of elderly people is a matter of great im- 
 portance. They want non-conducting material about the 
 person, so as to keep it measurably protected from vicissi- 
 tudes. " Purple and fine linen " may be dispensed with, 
 especially the latter. Cotton and fine woolen make the 
 best garments. Woolen undershirts should be worn at 
 all seasons, varied only in weight, being light in summer 
 and heavy in winter. Even in the tropics, health is gen- 
 erally best preserved by woolen clothes. Silk may be 
 worn by those who give it preference, though really not so 
 protective as wool. 
 
 Linen is very unsuitable for underwear, especially where 
 there is any tendency to rheumatism. Rheumatism predis- 
 poses to or causes diseases of the heart, and heart-clots. 
 Independently of this particular malady, heart-clots are 
 liable to form with advancing age, and directly impair or 
 arrest the heart's action, or send detached concretions to 
 remote or adjacent parts, as to the brain or lungs. These 
 concretions, or emboli, are always dangerous and often 
 fatal. Whatever chills the praecordium is liable to aggra- 
 vate this danger ; whatever gives it protection tends to 
 diminish it. Non-conducting material, then, such as flan- 
 nel, fur, or silk, is the proper covering for that sensitive 
 region ; and linen, as a good conductor, is conversely inap- 
 propriate. 
 
 In other regards, the dress may be adapted to the com- 
 fort and convenience of the wearer. There will be no com- 
 
82 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 fort with binding or constriction, as about the throat or 
 chest, or in tight-fitting shoes. It is an old saying that one 
 must keep the feet warm and the head cool, but the latter 
 portion is something of a play upon words. The man 
 whom age has robbed of the natural coyering of his head 
 often suffers more than discomfort from the loss, and may 
 require artificial protection. The bald old gentleman rid- 
 ing around on a rough day, in an open carriage, with his 
 head uncovered, in honor of the hoi polloi by the wayside 
 just before the election, is not in the state of felicity that 
 might be inferred from his smiles. Neuralgia, or some yet 
 more insidious enemy, is probably taking the measure of 
 that head, on that day, before taking possession on the day 
 following. 
 
 A remarkable life terminated just as the writer was 
 concluding his essay de senectute, and the whole career was 
 an illustrative one. Mr. William Cullen Bryant died at 
 the age of eighty-four, as the result of an accident. A 
 few years ago he wrote, by request, a letter to a friend 
 describing his mode of living, saying that he had reached a 
 pretty advanced period without the usual infirmities of old 
 age, and with strength, activity, and bodily faculties gen- 
 erally, in good preservation. 
 
 Mr. Bryant, one of the most intellectual men of the age, 
 poet, editor, philosopher, rose always with or before the 
 sun, and gave an hour to physical exercise of a very moder- 
 ate kind. He used dumb-bells " of the lightest," or swung 
 a chair around his head to expand his chest. He then took 
 a morning bath. In the country he would exercise by 
 going out to prune his trees, or engage in some such useful 
 work on his farm. His breakfast was of hominy and milk, 
 with a little' fruit, or something equally simple. After 
 breakfast, a short time was devoted to study in his library, 
 and then a walk of three miles to the ofiice of the Eoening 
 Post. After three hours at the office, he would walk home, 
 
THE DECLINING OK OLD MAN. 83 
 
 no matter what the state of the weather. He would take 
 an early dinner, eating vegetables freely, and meat at that 
 meal only. He would eat fruit at all times. In the even- 
 ing, no tea, but bread, butter, and fruit. After this re- 
 past, no severe mental labor, as tasking the faculties then 
 excites the nervous system and prevents sound sleep. 
 He went to bed about ten o'clock. "My drink," he 
 says, "is water, yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a 
 glass of wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding 
 myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine. I 
 never meddle with tobacco, except to quarrel with its 
 use." 
 
 Here is an instance of history teaching philosophy by 
 example. Mental and physical occupation were duly inter- 
 blended, so that there was no sacrifice of one class of facul- 
 ties to the other. He had no use for wine. The " crystal 
 element," approved by Dr. Armstrong in the art of pre- 
 serving health, sufficed him. The medical poet justly com- 
 mends that refreshing beverage as furnished by naiads, not 
 bar-maids, to good old men of rural ages : 
 
 " Happy in temperate peace their equal days. 
 Felt not the alternate fits of feverish mirth 
 And sick dejection ; still serene and pleased, 
 Full long they lived ; their only fate 
 Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death." 
 
 The late Prof. L. P. Yandell, in his last contribution to 
 medical literature, " On Old Age : Its Diseases and Hy- 
 giene," makes the final assertion that, while old men should 
 have congenial occupations, avoiding violent bodily exer- 
 tion, gusts of passion, "and painful thinking," yet "the 
 thought," he says, "with which I would close this essay 
 is, that the danger which most imperils the comfort of old 
 age is not overwork, but the want of enlivening occupa- 
 tion." 
 
84 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 Every practising physician will indorse this statement, 
 and will, for the most part, prove his belief in occupation, 
 as this venerable old gentleman did, by ministering to his 
 fellow-men until summoned himself to pass from time to 
 eternity. 
 
PAET II. 
 HYGIENICS m SOME DETAIL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TEMPERAMENTS AND IDIOSYNCRASIES.— INHERITANCE. 
 —HABIT.— CONSTITUTION. 
 
 Ik the foregoing pages the principles of hygiene have 
 been constantly kept in view, and urged through the vari- 
 ous terms of life therein considered. 
 
 Many important matters will now be considered some- 
 what in detail, though briefly. It is as impossible to make 
 rules suitable to all cases, or to every individual case, as it 
 was, without great violence, to make every man meet the 
 exact measure of the bed of Procrustes. In health every 
 one requires some modifications of the general laws of hy- 
 giene for himself ; just as in disease the physician finds it 
 necessary to modify his treatment in every case, in accord- 
 ance with the condition of the individual at that particular 
 time, and not according to the name of the disease, as the 
 unlearned are apt to suppose. 
 
 Any intelligent man conversant with the principles of 
 hygiene can readily make adaptations suitable to his indi- 
 vidual necessities. Thus, for examiple, instead of taking a 
 bath at a given temperature supposed to be just right, he 
 will find the advantage of varying up or down the scale, it 
 
 may be a matter of from 10° to 20° Fahr. 
 9 
 
86 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 The great differences in individuals, many of which are 
 perfectly obvious, must always be taken into account. 
 General physical structure, height, weight, and proportions, 
 require attention. A developed man, twenty-five years of 
 age, and six feet in height, should weigh about one hundred 
 and sixty pounds. A measurement of the chest, over the 
 nipples, should give a circumference at least equal to one- 
 half of the height of the individual. A larger measurement 
 indicates a full chest, a less measurement a defective one. 
 
 Difference of race has to be considered. The white race, 
 or the European, according to Agassiz, is superior to all 
 others, morally, mentally, and physically. It has most en- 
 durance, and greatest powers of adaptation. 
 
 Section 1. — Temperaments and Idiostnceasies, 
 
 We do not consider temperaments in these days to rest 
 upon a well-founded scientific basis, but still there are 
 certain appearances, distinctive of individuals or families, 
 which mark what are conventionally and conveniently 
 called their temperaments. A man of dark complexion 
 and hair, more or less grave or stern in manner, is said to 
 be of the bilious or choleric temperament. One of florid 
 complexion, with a quick circulation and a tendency to hem- 
 orrhages, is said to be of the sanguine temperament. The 
 lymphatic or phlegmatic temperament is shown by sluggish- 
 ness of mental and physical functions ; and the nervous 
 temperament by nervous excitability, with tendency to 
 nervous disorders or diseases. 
 
 " The Greek physiologists," says Dr. Millingen, " were 
 the first to classify these peculiarities, or temperamenta — 
 the natures of Hippocrates, the mixturm of Galen. They 
 considered organi^d bodies as an assemblage of elements 
 endowed with different properties, but combined in such 
 manner that their unions should constitute a whole, in which 
 none shoidd predominate in a healthy condition ; but, on 
 the contrary, they were to modify and temper each other. 
 
INHERITANCE. 87 
 
 their simultaneous action being directed and controlled by 
 the spirit of life, spiritus. It was the due combination of 
 these elements that constituted a perfect temperament ; 
 their aberrancy produced disease of body or mind." — 
 (" Curiosities of Medical Experience.") 
 
 There are certain modifications of character and of con- 
 dition which we commonly attribute to temperament, but 
 " the elements are so mixed up " that dividing lines are 
 scarcely practicable. The term will doubtless hold its own, 
 no matter how vague the meaning. 
 
 Idiosyncrasy is some peculiarity of condition attaching 
 to an individual, wherein he differs from the ordinary stand- 
 ard. " What is one man's meat is another man's poison." 
 It often happens that some article of food, or drink, or 
 medicine, affects an individual quite differently from the 
 manner in which it affects the generality of men. Some 
 persons are insusceptible to certain contagia ; others find no 
 immunity from one or even more attacks of such disease, as, 
 e. g., small-pox, which usually can only attack once in a life- 
 time. A patient should always make known his idiosyncra- 
 sies to his attending physician. 
 
 SBCTioif 2. — Inheeitanob. 
 
 Hereditary tendency demands attention. As parents 
 transmit form and feature, so do they likewise transmit 
 strength or infirmity. If one or other parent be scrofulous 
 or consumptive, the disease or tendency thereto will rarely 
 fail to be transmitted to some of the offspring. People are 
 not infrequently short-lived because of the sins of their 
 fathers, on account of which, as Hufeland says, a shorter 
 stamen vitce is accorded to them. A man who would not 
 be properly careful on his own account should be so in mer- 
 cy and justice to his offspring. 
 
 The intermarriage of disease has noteworthy influences. 
 If two consumptive, cancerous, or insane persons meet in 
 wedlock, their children may be considered assuredly doomed. 
 
88 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PEOMOTE IT. 
 
 Persons of the same stock, family, or blood, are apt to have 
 similar tendencies in . regard to diseases or infirmities, and 
 for that reason, if for no other, near relatives should not 
 intermarry. 
 
 Persons with transmissible diseases, present or impend- 
 ing, should not enter upon wedlock. Dr. Richardson recites 
 the following illustration of the intermarriage of two for- 
 midable proclivities, which may serve as a significant warn- 
 ing : " A young man of marked cancerous proclivity married 
 a woman whose parents had both died of pulmonary con- 
 sumption. This married couple had a family of five chil- 
 dren, all of whom grew np to adolescence, sustaining at 
 their best but delicate and feeble existences. The first of 
 these children died of a disease allied to cancer, called lupus; 
 the second, of simple pulmonary consumption ; the third, 
 owing to tubercular deposit in the brain, succumbed from 
 epileptiform convulsions ; the fourth, with symptoms of tu- 
 bercular brain-disease, sank from diabetes, the result of ner- 
 vous injury ; and the last, living longer than any of the 
 rest, viz., to thirty-six years, died of cancer. The parents, 
 in this instance, survived three of the children, but they 
 both died comparatively early in life ; the father from can- 
 cerous disease of the liver, the mother from heart-disease 
 and bronchitis." — (" Diseases of Modern Life.") 
 
 Section 3. — Habit. 
 
 Man becomes in time a creature of habit, if not a slave 
 to it. This being so, the cultivation of good habits is ex- 
 tremely important. Regular and well-ordered habits of life 
 certainly promote health and longevity. 
 
 Food and drink, and evacuations, labor and rest, exer- 
 cise, the working and the sleeping hours, should all be sys- 
 tematized. It is not meant, however, that a man must move 
 like a clock or other piece of machinery, but only that order 
 should be his rule, admitting withal of some deviations for 
 the vicissitudes of life. We knew a fine old gentleman 
 
HABIT. 89 
 
 whose system induced him to lay out a programm.e for 
 every day of the year, and this included change of clothing 
 appropriate to the change of seasons. He had his day for 
 assuming his winter garments, and his day for his summer 
 clothes. The seasons might deviate from the regular order, 
 but he would not, and the consequence was in the end that 
 he died of system, some years before the allotted term. 
 
 The writer has had patients from a boarding-school at 
 which the systematic principal caused the winter fires to be 
 lighted at a fixed time every recurring autumn. As a 
 consequence, the more sensitive pupils had to suffer moi-e or 
 less seriously from the depressing influence of cold as they 
 sat at their studies when, perchance, cold days anticipated 
 the cold season, as they usually do. It is evident that sys- 
 tem requires discretion. 
 
 It is the habit of some men to give way to their passions 
 or emotions, without exercising due self-control. Such ha- 
 bitual yielding, as to anger, hatred, or a spirit of revenge, 
 may lead eventually to insanity or crime. Habitual yield- 
 ing to the animal passions without due restraint is directly 
 or remotely promotive of premature decay, or mental or 
 physical imbecility, or both. 
 
 The habit of inordinate eating or drinking is incompati- 
 ble with health. 
 
 Habitual overwork, or excessive intensity of life, tends to 
 induce premature failure. Napoleon Bonaparte is said to 
 have allowed habitually but four hours of the twenty-four 
 to sleep ; for twenty hours, then, his mind and body were 
 in extreme tension. Some years ago an able critique was 
 written by a competent observer on the battle of Waterloo, 
 and the whole gist of the argument went to show that Na- 
 poleon at that time, when but little over forty-five years of 
 age, was waxing old, mentally and physically. He had 
 already outlived the transcendent and unrivaled abilities 
 which he had possessed but a few years before in the zenith 
 of his power. This view is probably correct. 
 
90 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 The habit of idleness leads to moral and physical injury. 
 Mind and body are strengthened by salutary exercise, and 
 become weakened by disuse. The muscles waste away. 
 The writer* once saw in consultation a delicate woman, the 
 wife of a paralytic husband. She had an infirmity that in- 
 duced some pain when she attempted to walk, and in time 
 she ceased to make any effort, from supposed incapacity, 
 until at length she seemed as much disabled as her husband. 
 She became paraplegic, like her husband, by mere force of 
 imitation ; her muscles became weak and wasted, and she 
 persistently declared herself unable to stand or to walk. 
 This inability was becoming real from habitual disuse of 
 the limbs. About that time a charlatan was advertising 
 remarkable cures ; the blind, the deaf, and the halt, were 
 instantly cured by his magical touch, together with some 
 cabalistic words used at the same time. This patient, being 
 under no medical care, fell into his hands, and in a short 
 time was walking about her house. From accounts given, 
 he gave her what would have been considered from other 
 hands nothing less than a terrible di'ubbing. The passes 
 made upon her spine were such as to alarm not only the 
 patient but the whole household. He then ordered her to 
 walk, which she did, and continued to do, though the origi- 
 nal malady, as treated by her regular physician, remained 
 unchanged. 
 
 Neither mind nor body should be allowed to be frittered 
 away in idleness. Eating, and drinking, and sleeping, are 
 necessary to life, but they are not its objects. " The life of 
 man," says Hufeland, "has a higher destination — action; 
 business, enjoyment." We may here interpose that enjoy- 
 ment is an important part of life if properly taken. The 
 working-man is justly entitled to all that he can get of it, 
 provided it be of a salutary kind, and in proper time and 
 place. Happiness is a rightful aim, even in this transient 
 career, and rational enjoyment goes to the sum of happiness 
 and of physical and moral weU-being. No man will find 
 
CONSTITUTION. 91 
 
 happiness, content, enjoyment, in idleness, but this term 
 does not apply to needful rest or recreation. A man is often 
 said to be enjoying life who is merely wasting it. This, of 
 course, is a great mistake. A man to enjoy life must have 
 all of his time employed, though a fair portion of that time 
 may be allotted to amusement, which, as affording mental 
 or physical recreation, is not to be deemed idleness. 
 
 SeCTIOIT 4. — CoNSTITUTIOir. 
 
 Every living individual has his own proper mould, with 
 a degree of power or want of power, of harmony or want 
 of harmony, in his various organs, which go to make up 
 what is called, in the ensemble, his constitution. When a 
 man is well endowed, so that there is a due and fair adjust- 
 ment of all the various parts, particularly of those organs 
 most important to health, as the digestive, circulatory, 
 pulmonary, and nervous organs or apparatus, we say he 
 has a good constitution. He is then, accidents aside, fitted 
 for health and longevity. When, however, there is defect 
 in the construction of certain important organs, when all 
 are feeble, or poorly developed, or when there is an ap- 
 parent want of vital power, we say the man has a delicate 
 or bad constitution. 
 
 A good constitution implies a great deal in regard to 
 the individual man. It means a good head, a well-developed 
 chest, a strong stomach and digestive organs, and good mus- 
 cular development, upon a well-constructed frame. Such 
 a combination is very apt to carry what is called good na- 
 ture or good temper along with it. 
 
 There are few people, in civilized life at least, who have 
 this endowment in its plenitude. The culture of civiliza- 
 tion, indeed, makes up to some extent by art for the debits 
 with which Nature charges us. A very vigorous consti- 
 tution has its privileges and immunities, but it is capable 
 of misleading men also by giving them an excess of con- 
 fidence in their own strength, so that they take risks beyond 
 
92 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 the line of prudence. And thus " the battle is not always 
 to the strong." 
 
 There is a mediocrity of range which embraces the 
 majority of men. He is an exceptional man who has not 
 some tendency to weakness of one or more organs. Indi- 
 viduals and families show these tendencies. In one man, 
 or in one family, the narrow chest leads to the apprehen- 
 sion of pulmonary disease, or at least of pulmonary de- 
 bility. In another, the formation about the head and neck 
 may lead to the apprehension of apoplexy. Some individ- 
 uals and families have a remarkable tendency to haemor- 
 rhages. In almost all families some predispositions to in- 
 firmities or disease are recognized or acknowledged. 
 
 In some the tendency is so strong and so persistent that 
 the constitution is essentially bad ; in others it is so slight 
 that the constitution may be considered good in spite of 
 the known tendency. 
 
 It is much easier in life to impair a good constitution 
 than to give vigor to a defective one ; yet it often happens 
 that a sound, conservative management saves individuals 
 from apparently impending diseases or infirmities. Thus 
 such maladies as consumption, scrofula, and even mental 
 insanity, may be warded oflE by the salutary influence of 
 medicina conservativa, or sanitary science. 
 
CHAPTER n. 
 
 THE AIR WE BREATHE — SEWERS AND CESSPOOLS.— 
 OZONE. — MALARIA. — ANIMAL EM ANA TIONS. — DEVI- 
 TALIZED HOUSE-AIR. 
 
 Section 1. — The Aib we beeathe. 
 
 Atmospheeic air is composed in its simplest terms of 
 oxygen and nitrogen, mixed but not chemically combined. 
 The oxygen is the great vivifier, the nitrogen being but a 
 diluent, so that the air, as Attfield says, is diluted oxygen. 
 But as we do not drink distilled water, neither do we re- 
 spire unmixed air. Carbon and hydrogen are always pres- 
 ent, and in small quantities they are not at all detrimental 
 to our welfare. The carbon, chemically combined with 
 oxygen, appears as carbonic acid ; the hydrogen, also chemi- 
 cally combined with oxygen, forms water or vapor. 
 
 As a matter of fact we breathe no air which does not 
 contain these four elementary substances, to wit : oxygen, 
 nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon. 
 
 These are the great feeders of organic life, animal or 
 vegetable, with the addition of certain inorganic, metallic, 
 or earthy substances. 
 
 The vegetable world feeds directly upon these elements ; 
 the animal world only, or principally, through the interven- 
 tion of the vegetable kingdom. 
 
 Animals do not absorb air as food, as plants do, but 
 they take it in by the lungs to make changes in the blood 
 which are essential to the preservation of life. The air 
 entering the delicate cells of the lungs yields to the used 
 or deteriorated blood there presented to it a supply of vivi- 
 
94 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PKOMOTE IT. 
 
 fying oxygen, while in return it carries off the redundant 
 carbonic acid discharged from the system through the dark 
 biood ah'eady used, and novr needing renovation. The 
 blood thus vivified by a fresh supply of oxygen, and by 
 the loss of matter which could not be retained longer with- 
 out detriment, passes to the left side of the heart, thence 
 to enter upon a new course of construction or repair. 
 
 For this great purpose we need pure blood ; and pure 
 blood, assuredly, needs pure air. "We may consider that 
 there is a commensurate ratio between the purity of the 
 blood and the purity of the air. But the air may be vitiated 
 from many sources, and, when so, the influence will be felt 
 by the blood and by the whole system. Animal exhala- 
 tions and vegetable decay are fertile sources of air-poison- 
 ing. There are many living germs or organisms in the air 
 at times or in places sometimes capable of being distin- 
 guished, or otherwise only known by their effects, which, 
 inhaled with the air, are productive of important or, it may 
 be, dangerous results. 
 
 Whatever consumes oxygen rapidly, without immediate 
 restoration of this element, renders the air more or less un- 
 fit for the purposes of respiration. "Wherever many persons 
 are assembled with closed doors and windows, the air be- 
 comes very impute from causes readily understood. In the 
 first place, the lungs take the vivifying oxygen from the 
 air, and, in the second place, they throw out carbonic acid 
 at the same time in quantities capable of vitiating the air 
 to an extent beyond the power of animal endurance. There 
 are indeed various other exhalations, organic or animal, 
 thrown off, and accumulating to the detriment of all the 
 persons exposed. Noxious gases and organic matters thus 
 remain diffused through the confined air of the apartment 
 until driven off by adequate ventilation. 
 
 Some years ago a British emigrant-ship sailed from Sligo 
 for Liverpool with two hundred passengers on board, whose 
 lodging-place was eighteen feet in length, eleven in width. 
 
THE AIR WE BREATHE. 95 
 
 and seven in height. Heavy weather coming on, the cap- 
 tain sent these passengers all below, and covered the hatches 
 with a tarpaulin which was made fast over them. He thus 
 made the steerage almost air-tight. The wretched passen- 
 gers, breathing an air immediately polluted, over and over 
 again, were poisoned by wholesale. Some became raving 
 maniacs. The groans of the dying commingled with the 
 curses of the more enduring were unheard or unheeded, 
 until one man managed to force his way on deck, and to 
 call the mate to the fearful spectacle below. Seventy-two 
 were already dead, and many were dying ; their bodies 
 were convulsed, the blood starting from their eyes, nos- 
 trils, and ears. 
 
 Persons rescued from such sources of contamination 
 are very liable to suffer subsequently with low, or, as they 
 are often called, putrid fevers. This is technical ochlesis, 
 or crowd-poisoning. 
 
 There are minor degrees of poisoning with such agents 
 as carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, and animal exhalations, 
 which are very common, but which are not duly appre- 
 ciated. The physician often has to inform families that 
 they are bringing untimely diseases upon themselves by 
 clustering in close rooms in winter with windows and doors 
 closed, with gas or other lights at night, and perhaps with 
 an air-tight coal-stove, with the damper turned so as to 
 save fuel. This is a fatal economy. The dwellers in such 
 rooms are not indeed suffocated in a single day or night, 
 but every day or night of such exposure tends to under- 
 mine the constitutions of all the inmates. Upon entering 
 such rooms from the open air the offensive and deleterious 
 effluvia are at once observed, but unfortunately habit makes 
 the inmates familiar with the odor, so that it ceases to give 
 warning of a danger which is not the less real for being 
 very insidious. 
 
 Close bedchambers are worse than close sitting-rooms. 
 
96 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTK IT. 
 
 for in the latter the doors are frequently opened, whereas 
 in the former the doors are usually closed for the night. 
 It is desirable that each sleeper should have one thousand 
 cubic feet of air-space ; that is, a clear space of ten feet in 
 all directions. Even this is an inadequate allowance with- 
 out accession of external air. This ought to be admitted 
 by windows, open fireplaces, or some of the special modes 
 of ventilation now in use. The removal of the old-fashioned 
 outside Venetian window-shutters from modern houses was 
 a hygienic mistake in many regards. They ought to be 
 restored. 
 
 Withal, sleepers must be careful about subjecting them- 
 selves to the influence of direct currents of air ; they should 
 seek a juste milieu between such currents and fixed or foul 
 air. 
 
 The atmosphere, near the earth at least, is loaded with 
 an infinitude of foreign matters. Particles ordinarily in- 
 visible are seen floating in myriads in the sunbeam, and 
 these are composed of all the detritus that comes from the 
 wear and tear of earth, and of the materials used thereupon, 
 and various contributions from the animal and vegetable 
 kingdoms. Many of these matters produce only mechani- 
 cal irritation when inspired ; while others may be, and 
 indeed often are, carriers of disease. What is called infec- 
 tion is not infrequently a form of contagion ; that is, mor- 
 bid particles, it may be of pus or bacteria, diffused as in ill- 
 ventilated hospital-wards, may carry disease directly from 
 one person to another. 
 
 It may be as well to record here as elsewhere an im- 
 portant and simple expedient for carrying off effluvia from 
 gas-lighted apartments, public or private, sick-rooms, or 
 sitting-rooms, which is, to have a tube over every burner, 
 which communicates with a chimney or with the open air. 
 
 Dr. Wilson says summarily that the changes produced 
 in an occupied space by respiration and transpiration are 
 the following : " The amount of oxygeir is greatly lessened, 
 
SEWERS AND CESSPOOLS. 97 
 
 the carbonic acid and watery vapor are largely increased, 
 ammonia and organic matter are evolved, and suspended 
 matter in the shape of low forms of cell-life and epithelium- 
 scales is thrown off." — ("Hygiene and Sanitary Science.") 
 
 Section- 2. — Sewees and Cesspools. 
 
 These are great sources of air-pollution. Foul air aris- 
 ing from them circulates through many houses, even of the 
 wealthy, carrying the seeds of disease or death. Its fetid 
 odor, formerly attributed to sulphuretted hydrogen {air 
 puant), is but partly due to that agent. It is deficient in 
 oxygen, while it is more or less charged with carbonic acid, 
 nitrogen, sulphuretted hydrogen, and ammonium sulphide. 
 Microscopic animal or vegetable organisms have been de- 
 tected in it. 
 
 Whatever the chemical obscurities as to its exact nature, 
 there is no doubt as to its pernicious influence. Dogs and 
 other animals have been made to inhale it, and diseases 
 were induced, corresponding with those affecting the human 
 race similarly exposed. " It cannot be doubted," says Dr. 
 Barker, "that cesspool emanations are, when steadily in- 
 haled, poisonous. The dogs subjected to the cesspool air 
 were more or less affected. The symptoms were those of 
 intestinal derangement, followed by prostration, heat of 
 surface of the body, distaste for food, and those general 
 signs which mark the forms of continued fever common to 
 the dirty and ill- ventilated homes of the lower classes of 
 men." Elsewhere this writer observes : " The symptoms 
 arising from sulphuretted hydrogen " (and the combined 
 agencies) " are well marked, and may be considered specific. 
 Vomiting and diarrhoea are the first and most prominent 
 symptoms. The latter is painful, the vomiting is diflBcult 
 and exhausting, and eventually there are insensibility and 
 entire prostration." 
 
 From such facts it is a just inference that many diseases 
 of obscure origin arise from this source. The dogs con- 
 10 
 
98 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 tracted a form of continued fever with enteric diseas^. And 
 so human beings exposed are liable to typhoid or enteric 
 fever. Cholera infantum, undoubtedly, which makes its 
 annual devastations in our cities, results rather from foul 
 air respired than from any aliments taken into the stomach. 
 These young subjects are from natural causes more impres- 
 sible than adults, and therefore are more readily affected. 
 
 As decomposition goes on most actively in summer, this 
 disease of children is otherwise known as summer-com- 
 plaint ; and it is desirable at this season to get children 
 away from such sources of infection into the pure air of 
 the country. 
 
 In winter, closed windows and doors in ill-ventilated 
 houses may cause the house-air to be even more impure 
 than in summer. Outlets must be had, under proper regu- 
 lations. 
 
 The presumption is always against purity of air in cities 
 from the innumerable sources of contamination. " Great 
 cities," says Prof. Stephen Smith, of New York, " are to- 
 day the destroyers of the race. If it were not for accessions 
 from the country they would soon become depopulated." 
 
 " A tenth of the people of the cities die of consump- 
 tion," says Prof. Donaldson, of Baltimore. " Of the rich 
 sixty in a thousand are afflicted with this disease, and two 
 hundred and twenty-three to the thousand of the poor." It 
 is unhappily true that that degree of poverty which de- 
 prives people of the ordinary comforts of life deprives them 
 of good health also. " Sedentary life and inactivity, im- 
 pure air, and the absence of sunlight in cities, produce a 
 fearful mortality from consumption. ISo exciting cause is 
 so general as in-door occupations." If the surplus popula- 
 tion of the cities were scattered over the country, and en- 
 gaged in agriculture or horticulture, there would be incal- 
 culable gain, to all concerned, in health and prosperity. 
 
 Langenbeck, the great German pathologist, asserts that 
 pulmonary diseases are almost entirely due to the breathing 
 
SEWERS AND CESSPOOLS. 99 
 
 of foul air. " The lungs of all persons," he says, " miners 
 included, who had worked for some years in close work- 
 shops and dusty factories, showed the germs of the fatal 
 disease ; while confirmed inebriates, who had passed their 
 life in the open air, had preserved their respiratory organs 
 intact, whatever inroads their excesses had made on the rest 
 of their system. If I should go into practice, and under- 
 take the cure of a consumptive, I should begin by driving 
 him out into the Deister " (a wooded mountain-range in Han- 
 over), " and preventing him from entering a house for a 
 year or two." 
 
 As our fellow-citizens cannot conveniently go to the 
 Deister for a couple of years, they must make up for this 
 deprivation by seeking pure out-of-door air as far as practi- 
 cable, whether by going to the country, or to city parks, 
 which are said to be the lungs of dense population, or by 
 other expedients. They must take care also to let fresh air 
 into the houses, at all seasons, with discretion, of course, as 
 to the method. 
 
 Withal, cities are not altogether pestiferous. It is a 
 saying that three generations in Paris extinguish a family, 
 unless recruited from without. The saying is not necessa- 
 rily true. The health of London has been so improved of 
 late years by hygienic measures that the mortality in that 
 city is less than the average mortality of all England. 
 
 Dr. Richardson proposes an ideal "city of health," 
 whence, by good sanitary regulations, all preventable dis- 
 eases would be banished ; or, rather, where they would 
 never gain a foothold. Such inflictions as " delirium tre- 
 mens, liver-disease, alcoholic phthisis, alcoholic degeneration 
 of kidney, and all the varied forms of paralysis, insanity, 
 and other affections due to alcohol, would be completely 
 effaced. The parasitic diseases, arising from the introduc- 
 tion into the body, through food, of the larvte of the entozoa, 
 would cease, and that large class of deaths from pulmonary 
 consumption, induced in leSs favored cities by exposure to 
 
100 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 impure air and badly-ventilated rooms, would, I believe, be 
 so reduced as to bring down the mortality of this signally 
 fatal malady one-third at least." 
 
 Such model cities are as yet only in Utopia, where one 
 
 " May feel the present Deity, and taste 
 The joy of God to see a happy world ! " 
 
 But doubtless improvements may be made approximat- 
 ing the ideal so as to make the masses who dwell in cities 
 healthier and happier, in far better physical and moral con- 
 dition, than at the present day. 
 
 Section 3. — Ozone. 
 
 This form of oxygen, which is considered to be more or 
 less a proper constituent of atmospheric air, is comparatively 
 absent in cities on account of the dust, exhalations, and 
 matters of ready oxidation, by which it is destroyed. It 
 tends to purify at the same time, by destroying the low or- 
 ganic remains with which it comes in contact. It is not 
 rare on the sea-shore, on mountains, or even in the open 
 fields, but its influence upon health is so little understood 
 that any extended consideration of it in these pages may be 
 dispensed with. When designedly inhaled it produces irri- 
 tation of the nasal passages, and more or less of catarrh. 
 It is probably influential in causing catarrhal afEections in 
 cool weather, or indeed, as Dr. Richardson believes, when- 
 ever the temperature is below 75° Fahr. Above this tem- 
 perature it exerts little or no appreciable influence. 
 
 Section 4. — Malaeia. 
 
 This is a subtile cause of disease, of almost unlimited 
 prevalence. Literally, malaria is only bad air, but conven- 
 tionally it is a bad air having peculiar properties. From 
 its wide diffusion. Dr. Miller, of New York, proposed the 
 term koinomiasmata for those exhalations from the earth, 
 
MALARIA. 101 
 
 Otherwise known as miasms, malaria, or marsh-poison, which 
 give rise to certain periodical or malarious diseases. 
 
 Heat, moisture, and vegetable decay, in their combina- 
 tion, are the factors usually productive of malaria ; and 
 malaria is a poison, or conveys a poison, which, according 
 to its concentration or dilution, and other circumstances, 
 may prove speedily fatal to persons exposed, or may merely 
 cause some trifling indisposition. The usual result of ex- 
 posure to malaria is intermittent or remittent fever. It 
 prevails mostly in low and swampy regions, and it is there- 
 fore often spoken of as marsh-miasm. Given low grounds, 
 sometimes inundated and sometimes uncovered, with sum- 
 mer heat and vegetable decay, malaria may be considered 
 a certain product, and malarious diseases in some form a 
 certain result. The malarious malady may be intermittent 
 or remittent fever, from a mild to a pernicious type, or neu- 
 ralgia, or dian'hoea, or dysentery, or some other form of 
 disease, with pretty surely terms of exacerbation and abate- 
 ment. Although we know so well where and under what 
 conditions malaria is developed, we do not know its intrin- 
 sic nature. 
 
 A man may live a long way from marsh, mill-dam, or 
 sluggish stream, and yet have his homestead penetrated by 
 this subtile poison by allowing the conditions to exist on 
 his premises. Decaying vegetable matter in his own cellar 
 may be the obvious producing cause. 
 
 Otherwise, malaria may be brought from a distance by 
 prevailing winds, though fortunately the greater the dis- 
 tance the greater the dilution, and consequently the less 
 deleterious influence. 
 
 It is most active at night, and especially just after and 
 just before the rising of the sun. In malarious regions 
 there should be no voluntary exposure at such time. Fogs 
 carry and diffuse malaria ; the mid-day sun, as it rarefies the 
 air, disperses, dilutes, and diffuses it too. Breakfast, or 
 even a cup of coffee, to say nothing of the powerful cin- 
 
102 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 chona-bai'k, taken before morning exposure, is measurably 
 protective. Persons dwelling in a house near a source of 
 malaria should keep the side of the house most exposed 
 closed at night, while they may with comparative impunity 
 leave windows open or otherwise let in air on the side not 
 directly exposed. Woodlands between habitations and ma- 
 larious regions give great protection. Various growths give 
 some degree of protection ; this is alleged of the common 
 sunflower {Ileliantlius annuus), when grown freely about 
 the premises. The eucalyptus-tree has the highest reputa- 
 tion in this regard, but unfortunately it will not thrive in 
 any region subject to severe winters. From the Carolinas 
 southward it will doubtless rescue many fertile regions 
 from the destroying influence of malaria, and thereby con- 
 vert waste lands into productive farms. In the fatal Cam- 
 pagna near Rome some French Trappists redeemed an old 
 abbey-farm, long abandoned on account of unhealthfulness, 
 by planting the eucalyptus freely over the premises. They 
 now live in the enjoyment of good health on the farm, 
 which is under successful cultivation. — {Sanitarian, Sep- 
 tember, 1876.) 
 
 Although the producing causes of malaria are so well 
 recognized, it sometimes shows its influence far away from 
 sources of ready recognition. Very formidable malarious 
 fevers may appear without the concurrent presence of the 
 ordinary factors, to wit, heat, moisture, and vegetable de- 
 cay. Thus high up in the Rocky Mountains, in cold and 
 arid regions, there is a mountain-fever which has all the 
 characteristics of malarious fever. But how can a malari- 
 ous fever exist where there is no malaria, and no cause 
 capable of producing it ? This has long been a crux in 
 etiology ; but it may be properly answered by the asser- 
 tion that there is no malarious fever independent of the 
 known cause which is malaria. This noxious agent, how- 
 ever, may find its way into the system not only from the air, 
 but also through the water we may drink, when impreg- 
 
MALARIA. 103 
 
 nated ■with it. The poison may be, and surely is, often 
 wafted far overhead until it reaches the clouds which be- 
 come charged with it, and which discharge it in rain or 
 snow. This matter has been ably set forth by Dr. Charles 
 Smart, U. S. A., who had ample opportunities of studying 
 the mountain-fever, its causes, nature, and treatment. 
 
 This careful investigator found in the various river- 
 waters consumed by the troops where the fever prevailed, 
 .19, .20, and .28 per million of ammonia from the nitrogen 
 of dissolved organic mattei*. He at first supposed this to 
 be derived from the decaying vegetation in the rivers or 
 their feeders. "But this theory was scarcely tenable in 
 the face of the fact that streams running in a rocky bed, 
 and with but little vegetation near their radicles, were 
 found to be nearly as much impregnated as those which 
 had a slower course in the tangled brushwood of lower- 
 lying valleys." 
 
 He was led to examine the first snow that fell, and 
 found that it contained nearly twice as much organic mat- 
 ter as the average of the river-waters examined. 
 
 He continued investigations, which led to the detection 
 of the origin of the organic taint in so-called pure streams : 
 that " it consisted of vegetable emanations and debris swept 
 up by the winds from the face of the continent, and pre- 
 cipitated by cold and moisture along with the snow from 
 the higher regions of the atmosphere." 
 
 The mountain-fever (remittent) recurred in the early 
 spring when the stream which furnished the water-supply 
 to the post was swollen to thrice its usual volume by the 
 melting snows, and charged with the larger amount of 
 organic matter which the predominance of snow-water 
 gave to the stream. 
 
 " Rhetorically," says Dr. Smart, " we make use of snow 
 as a symbol of purity. Dr. Parkes, however, informs us 
 that 'there has long been an opinion that snow-water is 
 unwholesome, but this is based on no reliable observation.' " 
 
104 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PBOMOTE IT. 
 
 Dr. Smart made careful observations, and found in snow- 
 flakes some .30 part per million of free ammonia, and .50 
 part organic ammonia. " A non-malarious country is af- 
 • f ected at a certain season with a malarious disease ; this 
 season corresponds with the contamination of the drinking- 
 water by vegetable matter brought from distant regions. 
 Swamp malaria is known to be transported by winds. It 
 is known to rise mist-like and to be wafted mountainward 
 from the valleys in which it is exhaled. And if more pon- 
 derable matter of vegetable origin be carried into the higher 
 strata of the atmosphere to be subsequently swept down 
 by the snow-fall, why may not malaria accompany it ? " 
 
 It is fortunate that rain and snow bring down to earth 
 malaria (and other noxious agents) which would accumulate 
 " as a pest-cloud enveloping the earth " but for the wash- 
 ing thus given to the atmosphere whereby it is cleansed 
 and purified. 
 
 The mountain-fever is most active when the streams 
 are full from rain and snow fall, whereas it is absent during 
 the months of September and October, " and these are the 
 months when the stream " — which supplies the post with 
 water — " is at its lowest and purest, so far as it is a ques- 
 tion of organic impurity." 
 
 The fever did not arise from the influence of high tem- 
 perature, for, when the ground was covered with snow, it 
 was abundantly active. " The Fourteenth Infantry during 
 the early part of their campaign were several times obliged 
 to camp near bad water — melted snow collected in natural 
 tanks — and during the latter part the water-supply for all 
 culinary and camp purposes had frequently to be derived 
 from the snow covering the earth. Here the increased prev- 
 alence of mountain-fever at Fort Bridger during the month 
 of January may be referred to, and attributed to accidental 
 circumstances of a character similar to that which gave 
 Camp Douglas a series of cases in January, 1877." — {Ameri- 
 can Journal of Medical Sciences, January, 1878.) 
 
ANIMAL EMANATIONS. 105 
 
 All hygeists agree that malaria may be absorbed by 
 water, which, when taken into the stomach, is capable of 
 exerting its noxious influence. The bad air, the malaria, 
 is brought back to the surface of the earth from which it 
 arose, and thus, concealed in drinking-water, far away from 
 its origin and producing causes, it gives rise to the distinc- 
 tive diseases of which it is known to be, far or near, the 
 fons et origo. " Forewarned, forearmed." A knowledge of 
 the facts gives indications for the prevention of evil results. 
 
 "When the malarious poison, whatever it may be, is 
 brought down to the earth, a goodly portion falling on the 
 paved streets of cities is at once washed off by surface or 
 sewer drainage. Some, howevei-, is absorbed into the earth 
 even in cities, and a greater quantity of course in earth not 
 stone-clad with payements. Turning up the soil by shovel, 
 spade, or plough, often sets free malaria, and gives rise to 
 the consequential diseases. A few years ago, a new rail- 
 way company was engaged in trenching and tunneling a 
 track through a portion, partially suburban, of the city of 
 Baltimore, and for one or two years malarious diseases 
 were rife where hitherto and since they have been rarely 
 observed. 
 
 Malaria causes an immense proportion of human disease, 
 and gives no immunity from, nor protection against, other 
 diseases. Fortunately there are known methods of hygiene 
 and prophylaxis which are competent to check its spread 
 and influence, and in the course of years it is probable that 
 it will be little known or felt in communities of high civili- 
 zation. 
 
 SBCTioisr 5. — Animal EwcANATioiirs. 
 
 The effluvia from decaying animal matters are very ca- 
 pable of conveying disease, though it is not easy to get exact 
 knowledge as to their potency in this respect. Some work- 
 men earn their subsistence in the midst of animal decay 
 without appreciable injury ; while, on the other hand, ani- 
 
106 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 mal putrescence notably causes the spread of diseases. A 
 curious fact is related in regard to a dissection made of a 
 putrid liver, by a student of medicine when a candidate for 
 degrees, in Paris. He protested against the work, but per- 
 formed it. The result in his casfe was a fever which went 
 off in a heavy sweat ; but one of the by-standers was taken 
 with a fever which proved fatal, while others were attacked 
 with a burning exanthematous fever from which they slowly 
 recovered. 
 
 Poisonous animal miasmata give rise to continued fevers, 
 wherein they differ from marsh miasmata. Dr. Parkes re- 
 cords that in the French camp before Sebastopol, when 
 numbers of dead horses lay putrefying and unburied, the 
 effects were so serious that the spread of typhus was sup- 
 posed to be due to this cause. 
 
 As all putrid effluvia are dangerous, or may become so, 
 it is necessary to have the sources removed from human 
 habitations. Too much confidence should not be given to 
 deodorizers, which not infrequently only conceal foul odors, 
 without impairing the potency of the deleterious agent with 
 which they are associated. The source of all foul odors 
 should be traced, and if possible removed. 
 
 Section 6. — Devitalized House-Aie. 
 
 One often observes, upon entering a house, that the air 
 wants freshness, besides being loaded more or less with ex- 
 traneous matters. Sometimes there is coal-gas, or carbonic 
 oxide, as we supposed, until better informed by Prof. Rem- 
 sen, of Johns Hopkins University, and sometimes leakage 
 from the gas pipes or burners, both of which are abundantly 
 deleterious, to say nothing of the danger of accidents. " Hy- 
 drogen is a prominent constituent of all the substances used 
 for producing artificial light, such as tallow, oil, and gas. 
 The explosive force of large quantities, such as a roomful, 
 of coal-gas and air, though vastly below that of an equal 
 weight of gunpowder, is well known to be sufficient, at least, 
 
DEVITALIZED HOUSE-AIR. 107 
 
 to blow out that side of the room which offers least resist- 
 ance." — (Attfield.) 
 
 While writing these pages, an accident happened in Bal- 
 timore which may serve as a caution to the unwary. An 
 old lady came from the West to take passage in a German 
 steamship, for the purpose of revisiting her native land. 
 She took a room at an hotel, and, upon retiring, blew out the 
 gas before going to sleep. She went to sleep — to the sleep 
 that knows no waking — for in the morning, as she failed to 
 make her appearance, an attendant went to call her, and 
 found her quite dead, in an atmosphere of gas which would 
 probably have exploded if approached with a lighted candle. 
 
 Dr. Richardson, in a few graphic touches, shows what 
 is by far too common in every community : 
 
 " In many private houses, houses even of the well-to-do 
 and wealthy, streams of devitalized air are nursed with the 
 utmost care. There is the lumber-room of the house, in 
 which all kinds of incongruous things are huddled away 
 and excluded from fresh air. There are dark under-stair 
 closets, in which cast-off clothes, charged with organic 
 diiris of the body, are let rest for days or even weeks to- 
 gether. There are bedrooms overstocked with furniture, 
 the floors covered with heavy carpets, in which are collected 
 pounds of organic dust. There are dressing-rooms in which 
 are stowed away old shoes, and well-packed drawers of well- 
 worn clothing. There are dining-rooms in which the odor 
 of the last mea,l is never absent, and from the sideboard 
 cupboards of which the smell of decomposing fruit or cheese 
 is always emanating. There are drawing-rooms in which 
 the scent of decayed roses, or of the varnish from the 
 furniture, or of the dye from the table-covers, is always 
 present. There are kitchens in which there is the odorous 
 indication of perpetual cooking. There are sculleries where 
 the process of ' washiag-up ' seems to be in permanent ac- 
 tion, and where the products of change from stored bones, 
 potato-parings, recent vegetable green food, and other simi- 
 
108 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PEOMOTE IT. 
 
 lar refuse, are abiding. There are water-closets in wHch 
 there is, at any time of day or night, a persistent, faint am- 
 moniacal odor." 
 
 Such matters are not adduced merely to show what 
 exists ; the prudent housekeeper may take the hint from 
 them as to what ought to be done. No decomposition, no 
 odors, must be allowed to pervade the house. Decaying 
 matters must be removed, and air must pass freely through 
 every chamber. Sunlight ought to be admitted for a por- 
 tion of every day. " The sun's rays not only prevent damp- 
 ness and mustiness, but they purify the atmosphere by de- 
 stroying organic matters," says Prof. Donaldson. 
 
 In private houses generally ventilation is accomplished 
 mostly through windows, doors, and open fireplaces, with- 
 out special or peculiar arrangements. We must use them 
 as we have them, in winter as in summer, and still with 
 prudence, so as not to throw draughts upon the occupants 
 of the rooms. More fuel will indeed be used in winter, but, 
 as the professor just quoted forcibly remarks : "Fresh air is 
 better worth paying for than even food ; it is more essen- 
 tial to health." — (" House- Air the Cause and Promoter of 
 Disease.") 
 
 Dr. Van Bibber, of Baltimore, suggests as an important 
 sanitary improvement the general removal of fences, espe- 
 cially the board fences so common between neighboring 
 houses or lots in our towns and cities. Lots thus inclosed are 
 often made receptacles for waste-matters that ought to be 
 removed far away, and from the confined air in these inclos- 
 ures the dwelling largely draws its supply. The removal 
 of the fences, by allowing a free sweep of the winds, would 
 undoubtedly be a great sanitary gain. Wire fences might 
 be used to protect property, but privacy would be lost, and 
 every sight and sound in each inclosure would be common 
 to a whole neighborhood. Thick-set hedges would be no 
 little improvement on the fences, but perhaps the best 
 measure practicable at present is that the corporation re- 
 
DEVITALIZED HOUSE-AIR. 109 
 
 quire official sanitary inspection at reasonable intervals, with 
 the power of enforcing cleanliness on the premises. 
 
 With all known expedients we cannot make house-air as 
 pure as the suri'ounding atmosphere in its ordinary condi- 
 tion. Let any one lying in a commodious bedchamber of a 
 still summer night with open windows approach a window 
 and lean over in the outer air to try what may be the differ- 
 ence. It is such that a return to the bed in the centre of 
 the room seems like going to voluntary suffocation. A 
 child in the cradle, half smothered with injudicious sur- 
 roundings, will toss or fret or cry by the hour in a spacious 
 nursery. Carry it out on the porch, it will fall into a sweet 
 sleep ; bring it in, and more fretting and crying. The 
 child is suffering for vital air, and has no other way of ex- 
 pressing itself — hinc illm lachrymoe. 
 
 The stall-fed cows about Paris, according to Bouchardat, 
 become tuberculous ; those ranging the fields do not. Our 
 race cannot go back to the primitive times and sleep in the 
 open air like our first parents, on beds of flowers ; in this 
 respect, beast and bird — 
 
 "They to their grassy couoh, these to their nests " — 
 
 have some advantage over us; but men should take to them- 
 selves and give to their wives and children, especially to 
 their young and growing children, the free use of sunlight 
 and fresh air out-of-doors up to their possibilities. The 
 air of the house should be kept pure also up to the possi- 
 bilities. And furthermore, the house-air when too moist, 
 too charged with vapor, should be dried preferably by open 
 fires ; when too dry, moisture should be introduced by the 
 well-known and familiar expedients. 
 
 Air-tight closets in houses should be dispensed with. 
 Lattice or wire doors should replace solid doors. Movable 
 articles, as clothes, beds, and bedding, should be exposed 
 from time to time to the purifying agency of the sun in the 
 open air. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 WAT£!Ii. 
 
 We may now consider the qualities and use of drinking- 
 water, which demand attention during the whole term of 
 existence. Water is so much a necessity that dry food would 
 sustain life but a very short time without its thirst-quenching 
 and solvent powers. Like atmospheric air, it must be pure, 
 that is, free from deleterious admixtures. Absolute chemi- 
 cal purity is not desirable; man does not want or- desire 
 distilled water as his usual beverage, but he does want 
 water which shall not contain any noxious elements. It is 
 related that Peter the Great, of Russia, once gave and en- 
 forced an order that the male children of his seamen should 
 be obliged to drink sea-water, for the purpose of accustom- 
 ing them to it, so that they could bear the deprivation of 
 fresh-water, when themselves sei-ving in his navies, during 
 any scarcity of that important commodity ! His nursery of 
 seamen perished in the experiment. 
 
 It is but of recent years that scientific investigation has 
 been showing to the world how large a proportion of its 
 population has been poisoned, more or less fatally, by the 
 use of impure water. This has been effected upon the 
 largest scale in the great cities, where people have con- 
 sumed water from rivers polluted by all imaginable and 
 unimaginable filth ; or from wells, the waters of which 
 were contaminated by washings from all the excreta of 
 dense population. The most conspicuous instances have 
 been shown in London, where cause and effect have been 
 most carefully traced. All kinds of enteric diseases, includ- 
 
WATER. Ill 
 
 ing typhoid fever and cholera, and many others, are dif- 
 fused through communities by the use of contaminated 
 drinking-water. No pump-water should ever be considered 
 potable in cities ; and even about country-houses care must 
 be taken that the well is not a receptacle for matters that 
 modem science, as Mr. Chadwick maintains, would utilize 
 by applying them to the surface of the earth. 
 
 Filters. — Good water-filters should be brought into gen- 
 eral use in town-houses, which usually receive their supplies 
 from sources not above suspicion. The silicated carbon 
 filters are probably the best in use. Where malarial con- 
 tamination of water may be present or suspected, producing 
 what has been called aqua-malarial fever, filtering and 
 boiling before use would be eminently advantageous. 
 
 Ice. — Upon a theory that " dirt does not freeze," ice is 
 supposed to be intrinsically pure, but this is a great mis- 
 take. It is quite capable of entangling impurities, and of 
 transmitting disease. A remarkable instance of this was 
 reported two years ago, by Dr. Nichols, attending physi- 
 cian at Rye Beach, New Hampshire. Many persons at a 
 large hotel were attacked with enteric disease, the source of 
 which, for a time, was very obscure. But when the ice-sup- 
 ply came under observation, it was found that ice used at 
 that hotel was brought from a neighboring pond, which, 
 when stirred in warm weather, gave off an intolerably offen- 
 sive odor. This was due to decomposing sawdust in marsh- 
 mud. Prof. Nichols examined some of the melted ice, and 
 found it charged with decaying organic matter, which he 
 considered to be quite adequate to cause the extent of dis- 
 ease which had followed its use. With its disuse, the 
 attendant diseases disappeared. "The notion," says Dr. 
 Nichols, " that ice purifies itself by the process of freezing, 
 is not based upon trustworthy scientific obsei-vation. On 
 the contrary, it is utterly wrong in principle to take ice for 
 consumption from any pond the water of which is so fouled 
 as to be unfit for drinking purposes." 
 
112 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 Lead in Water. — Workers in paint and in lead-works 
 generally are often poisoned by lead, so that in all such 
 works, its effects being known, measures are or ought to 
 be taken to counteract its injurious influence. Lead-poi- 
 soning affects the nervous and the digestive systems. Colic 
 of an obdurate kind, and a peculiar form of paralysis, are 
 more or less characteristic. But many persons are affected 
 by lead who have no suspicion of exposure to its influence. 
 Some of the forms are occasionally added to wine, cider, 
 and other beverages, by fraudulent dealers. But, more- 
 over, it is not an uncommon contamination in drinking- 
 water, being derived from the lead pipes through which it 
 passes. Chronic indigestion, obstinate colic, and nervous 
 disturbances, occurring to several membei-s of the same 
 family, should always induce investigation as to the intro- 
 duction of lead into the system through the water-pipes or 
 other agencies. As lead is so convenient in some respects, 
 measures have been taken to continue its use without the at- 
 tendant dangers ; and a composite pipe is now made of lead 
 lined with pure block-tin, by which safety and convenience 
 are both maintained. 
 
 Good water should be bright and clear, and odorless. 
 Its good qualities should be looked to for man and beast. 
 It must not be supposed that we can be indifferent to the 
 water used by our domestic animals. Our interest in it is 
 " very direct. In White's Compendium of Cattle-Medicine " 
 great stress is laid on "the propriety of supplying cattle 
 with pure water — ^not only for the health of the animals, 
 but, so far as cows are concerned, for the quality of the 
 milk, butter, and cheese. Mr. White gives examples of the 
 improvement of cattle by means of a good water-supply." 
 
 The writer has italicized a few words, to call attention 
 to their extreme importance. 
 
 Some people are intemperate in the use of water. The 
 following quotation from Dr. Balbirnie may give a useful 
 hint in this respect : " In the healthy, drinking during a 
 
WATER. 113 
 
 meal aids digestion, if ihe solid matters be of a nature to 
 require it ; and, on the other hand, it impedes digestion if 
 the quantity taken renders the mass too liquid. The 
 healthy may safely trust their own sensations, which are 
 often safer guides than any abstract principles. But to the 
 dyspeptic we say, do not disturb digestion by undue dilu- 
 tion of a meal, or too soon after it. This relaxes the coats 
 of the stomach, impairs its secretions, and paralyzes its 
 movements. By drinking little at a time, the risk of ex- 
 ceeding proper limits will be avoided." 
 
 Americans, beyond all people, are devoted to the use 
 of ice-water. A Scotch physician. Dr. Whitelaw, says : 
 " Cold water, unless in small sips at intervals, should not 
 be drunk when the body is hot and fatigued ; as either 
 inflammation, or shock without reaction, may be the sad 
 result. .The shock is carried to the heart by the intimate 
 nervous connection between the stomach and that organ." 
 
 Cold water in Scotland is probably a much milder drink 
 than in America. "We must make an earnest protest against 
 the habit so common among Americans, of drinking some- 
 thing as near to liquid ice as can be obtained. Water moder- 
 ately cooled with ice is a wholesome and appropriate drink, 
 used with ordinary discretion, but when made intensely 
 cold its use is hazardous, and may be disastrous. It should 
 not be allowed to children even remedially, for, as a reme- 
 dy, ice (clean and pure) is more appropriate, since, while it 
 reduces animal temperature, its gradual solution saves the 
 gastric nerves from sudden shock. 
 
 The public intelligence has to be aroused in regard to 
 drinking-water, and many eminent writers are bringing 
 the matter under notice. Dr. Bowditch, after extensive 
 research, says : " Only one-third of the towns and cities of 
 this nation make any claims, even the most trivial, of en- 
 deavoring to procure pure potable water for their inhabi- 
 tants. The remainder, 65.73 per cent., either confess care- 
 lessness or ignorance of the subject. In other words, over 
 
114 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 one-half of the people of these United States are openly and 
 avowedly living in a senseless disregard as to whether they 
 are drinking pure water or water contaminated by every 
 kind of filth. We may be quite sure that such recklessness 
 in regard to human life will not exist a half -century hence." 
 — ("Centennial Discourse on Public Hygiene and State 
 Preventive Medicine.") 
 
 If the prophecy be fulfilled, its accomplishment will be 
 largely due to the enlightened work of this eminent sani- 
 tarian reformer. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CLOTHma. 
 
 From the standpoint of the hygeist, clothing is intended 
 to preserve an equable temperature about the surface of 
 the body. In winter, by retaining the animal heat, it pro- 
 tects us from external cold. In summer it protects us from 
 the powerful rays of the sun. Animal temperature is nearly 
 invariable, while the temperature of the external air varies, 
 taking an annual range, we may say, of 150° Fahr. In a 
 single day we may have, though rarely, a range of 20°, 30°, 
 or even 40°. These variations try the system severely — 
 beyond its powers of endurance, indeed, without the pro- 
 tection of clothes. A man ill clad and exposed during a 
 severe winter's night perishes with cold ; and likewise a 
 man exposed, with head ill protected, to the powerful rays 
 of the summer's sun, is liable to be smitten with sudden 
 death. 
 
 The virtue of clothing may be principally estimated by 
 the conducting or non-conducting properties of the materials. 
 A linen shirt takes warmth and moisture from the body 
 and discharges them rapidly into the surrounding air. Thus 
 this garment is equally pleasant and appropriate for a hot 
 summer's day. A woolen shirt, on the contrary, takes heat 
 and moisture but slowly from the body, and discharges 
 them slowly ; therefore a woolen or flannel shirt is the 
 proper garment for winter or for cold weather. 
 
 These general propositions are correct, but they are not 
 of uniform application. If the cold of winter stood uni- 
 formly at about 30° Fahr., and the heat of summer uni- 
 
116 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 formly at 80° Fahr., we could adopt flannel and linen as 
 absolutely appropriate to those seasons, winter and sum- 
 mer ; but since there are rapid changes not only from season 
 to season, but during many individual days of any and 
 every season, such method must require modifications. As 
 linen is such a ready conductor, it is not the best material 
 for underclothing, even during midsummer, for delicate or 
 sensitive subjects. However pleasant it may be to the 
 wearer when the thermometer stands at 75° or 80°, it will 
 give very defective protection if there occur a sudden fall 
 to 65° or 60°, which is by no means uncommon. By rapid 
 conduction of heat and moisture from the body, it increases 
 the sense of chilliness, and may thus aid, rather than check, 
 the evil effected by sudden change. It is, therefore, in a 
 variable climate, not quite a safe article of underclothing, 
 even in midsummer. It makes an excellent outer garment 
 indeed, on account of its lightness and its reflection of the 
 sun's rays ; and, moreover, as an outer garment, it may be 
 conveniently changed at a moment's warning. 
 
 Cotton holds an intermediate place between linen and 
 wool. It does not absorb heat and moisture so readily as 
 linen, and there is less evaporation from it. From high 
 temperatures it does not protect so well as linen, nor from 
 low so well as wool, but in some respects it has advantages 
 over both. Thus it gives better protection against summer 
 vicissitudes than linen does, while it does not stimulate 
 cutaneous action like flannel. A sensitive skin is stimu- 
 lated to overaction by a woolen shirt with an undue in- 
 crease of perspiratory matter. It may thus happen that 
 cotton worn next to the skin during the summer will be a 
 better safeguard to health than either of the other two 
 textures. 
 
 Merino, made of cotton and wool, is a good combination 
 for intermediate use. 
 
 Silk in former times was appreciated, perhaps too high- 
 ly, for underwear. It is probably only superior to cotton 
 
CLOTHING. 117 
 
 in being more pleasant to the sense of touch. It is certainly- 
 much safer than linen, especially for rheumatic subjects. 
 
 Wool merits precedence over these various materials. 
 It may be prepared for all climates and for all seasons. 
 From the equator to the poles woolen garments may be 
 said, in general terms, to be the best. In the tropics, and 
 in regions eminently malarious, persons wearing flannel 
 find a degree of immunity not given by clothing of other 
 materials. This fact has been abundantly demonstrated 
 among seamen serving in East India and other tropical 
 seas. The merits of the flannel cummerband are fully appre- 
 ciated by all Americans or Europeans serving or dwelling 
 in the East Indies. 
 
 What Nature accomplishes for the bu-ds of the air and 
 the beasts of the field, with man is left to his discretion. 
 Birds and beasts are not stripped in summer ; they still re- 
 tain their clothing, only being lighter in summer and heav- 
 ier in winter. Aries sheds his superabundant fleece in the 
 spring, if not clipped by the thrifty hand of the shepherd, 
 and with his offspring, " the shorn lamb," he wears a light 
 woolly coat for the summer, which grows duly heavy for 
 the untempered winds of the ensuing winter. 
 
 Woolen garments by their porosity allow the escape of 
 emanations from the person, though this porosity does not 
 encourage a rapid escape of heat. Dry air is a capital non- 
 conductor, and the meshes of the wool entangle the air, so 
 that it remains about us, retaining to a great extent the 
 natural warmth of the body. Wool has some remarkable 
 hygrometric properties. It is competent to absorb a con- 
 siderable degree of moisture, and render it latent. This 
 hygrometric water may be discovered by weighing the fab- 
 ric before and after desiccation ; it is not appreciable to 
 the senses. 
 
 Certain water-proof fabrics have been brought largely 
 into use during the last quarter of a century. Their advan- 
 tages and disadvantages ought to be understood. They 
 
118 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 should not be worn next to the skin, as they arrest insensi- 
 ble perspiration and other exhalations, and cause the person 
 to be bathed in an unwholesome and uncleanly sweat. If 
 worn as overalls they are less objectionable, inasmuch as 
 some of the surface emanations are absorbed by the under- 
 gaiments, which, if of wool, being hygrometric, retain them 
 for a short time without risk ; but they should only be 
 worn for a short time, and should be very loose, so as to 
 allow escape or change of air. Water-proofs used without 
 discretion are productive of rather than protective against 
 rheumatism, and even more formidable diseases. Most per- 
 sons have found that rubber shoes, worn for consecutive 
 hours, make the feet damp instead of keeping them dry. 
 Such shoes should only be worn for brief exposure to snow 
 or rain. 
 
 The color of clothes is worthy of consideration. Light 
 clothes reflect heat, dark clothes absorb it. Black absorbs 
 odors and deleterious matters more than white ; therefore, 
 dark dresses are least appropriate in the presence of conta- 
 gious diseases. 
 
 Adaptation. — The fit or adaptation of clothes to the 
 person is a very important matter. The clothes should 
 allow free play to all the movements of the person, and un- 
 obstructed flow of the circulation of the blood. Men should 
 never wear tight-fitting cravats, nor allow any binding from 
 shirt-collars. Some years ago many British soldiers fell 
 victims to close military stocks, which, obstructing the easy 
 return of the blood from the head, produced cerebral con- 
 gestions and apoplexy. When ladies compress the waist 
 and chest, they do so to their own detriment in all direc- 
 tions. To detail the injuries done would be to go to no 
 little extent into descriptive anatomy, soon merging in mor- 
 bid anatomy. Tight-lacing, now less common than for- 
 merly, not only disfigures the individual woman, but it is 
 a wrong to humanity. M. Chomel says satirically of the 
 French ladies, " Aucunefemme ne se serre." 
 
CLOTHING. 119 
 
 Prof. Gaillard Thomas, of New York, shows, in a few 
 graphic touches, what evils befall the sex from improprie- 
 ties of dress, in his work on " Diseases of Women; " but, as 
 we do not propose to discuss diseases, but only the means 
 of avoiding them, we will merely offer the reminder here 
 that many diseases do follow such improprieties, and sug- 
 gest that ladies should be true to their own interests rather 
 than to any behests of fashion. 
 
 Dr. Washington L. Atlee, of Philadelphia, made an ad- 
 dress before the Pennsylvania Medical Society, in which he 
 endeavored to bring ladies to a good standard of dress. 
 "Look at that interesting, delicate girl, pallid and wan, 
 struggling wearily under a weight of clothing which the 
 strongest of our sex would not tolerate ; all suspended, not 
 upon her shoulders, but upon her necessarily constricted 
 waist." This " beautiful peafowl " walks abroad dragging 
 after her cigar-stumps, quids of tobacco, and street dust or 
 mud, and, when she reaches home, " her costly silk or satin 
 skirts are smeared, her stockings soiled, and her limbs wet 
 and cold. . . . But this is not all. Follow in the footsteps 
 of this fair one, and examine the imprint of her shoes, the 
 heel-mark scarcely larger than the thumb-nail, then a skip, 
 and then again the impression of a very narrow sole. Meas- 
 ure her tiny track. Behold ! it is only five or six inches 
 long ! What a celestial foot for so stately a maiden ! Now 
 examine her shoe — a heel about two inches high, shaved 
 down almost to a point, and planted forward almost under 
 the instep. . . . Let us glance for a moment at these dog- 
 mas of fashion. Examine a lady in full dress thus poised : 
 high heels and a constricted waist supjDorting from ten to 
 thirty pounds of merchandise ! She cannot if she would 
 maintain a perfectly erect position. Look at her figure ; 
 her heels are tilted up, she is partly on tiptoe ; the feet, 
 head, and shoulders, are thrown forward, and the hips 
 must necessarily take an opposite direction to maintain the 
 proper equilibrium. Why, this is a caricature, a burlesque 
 
120 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 on female beauty ! But when she stands forth as God has 
 made her — erect in her fine proportions ; with her full, 
 finely-chiseled bust ; her ample waist responding naturally 
 to every inspiration ; animated by the glow of vigorous 
 health ; and clothed so as not to clog any vital function nor 
 hide every grace — and walks forth, as only she can walk 
 who practically recognizes the physiology of the foot — she 
 caiTies herself with true majesty ; she is ' a thing of beauty 
 and a joy forever,' and we bow down in admiration to the 
 most beautiful object in creation." 
 
 "We think Shakespeare says, or hints, that the ladies love 
 the approbation of the gentlemen, and, if this be so, they 
 ought to justify this enthusiastic admiration by preserving 
 their forms as God has made them, instead of vainly getting 
 up caricatures or burlesques on female beauty. 
 
 The chaussure is a very important matter. The writer 
 knows ladies practically retired from society on account of 
 suffering feet, sacrificed to fashion. He knows some who 
 directly and justly accuse the fashionable shoe of giving 
 them terrible pains in the limbs and loins. 
 
 Easy-fitting shoes and boots, with broad soles, and suffi- 
 cient heels in the proper place, are necessary equally to 
 health and comfort. In summer, a tight shoe compresses 
 the foot very painfully when swollen by heat ; in winter it 
 checks the surface circulation, which is necessary to the 
 preservation of the animal heat of the surface, and thus 
 chills the foot and predisposes to the destructive influence 
 known as frost-bite. When the foot has a certain amount 
 of play in the boot, the circulation is unimpaired, and there 
 is furthermore a stratum of warm air playing between the 
 foot and the leather. The tight boot, by impeding circula- 
 tion, and by allowing no room for this confined air, may 
 effect irreparable mischief. A boot or shoe, so far as hy- 
 giene is concerned, should fit easily, not too tightly, for 
 reasons just stated, and not too loosely, as the rubbing of 
 the foot in a very loose shoe is attended with one of the 
 
CLOTHING. 121 
 
 evils of a cramping shoe — ^that is, it causes corns and bun- 
 ions. The sole of the shoe should be at least as broad as 
 the whole sole of the foot when spread out ; and the shoe 
 should be longer by a half -inch or more than the foot, to 
 allow for the degree of extension which always takes place 
 in walking. Many persons have occasion to remember that 
 a shoe which appeared sufficiently long in the shoe-shop, 
 while the foot was at rest, gave pain ever after in walking : 
 this is explained by the fact that no allowance was made 
 for the extension which is natural and necessary in motion. 
 
 The writer has known tight shoes to give rise to par- 
 oxysms of gout in the .predisposed. Sandals or gum soles 
 may be worn on shoes where persons have to walk for a 
 long time on damp pavements. They prevent the absorp- 
 tion of moisture, while they do not restrain or retain exha- 
 lations as gum shoes do. 
 
 In speaking of the chaussure, a passing remark may be 
 made upon a danger lurking in stockings, of comparatively 
 recent origin. Persons of delicate skin have suffered some- 
 times both locally and generally from the effects of the dyes 
 in colored stockings. The aniline dyes used, generally of 
 red or yellow tints, are capable of poisoning the skin, and 
 even to some extent the whole system. The dyes may in- 
 deed exert their influence through any clothing in contact 
 with the person. Dr. Richardson gives an instance of a 
 young gentleman who consulted him for what was consid- 
 ered a rapidly-developed attack of erysipelas on the chest 
 and back. He was covered with an intensely red rash, and 
 he was affected with nervous symptoms, with faintness and 
 depression of pulse of a singular and severe kind. The doc- 
 tor traced both the local eruption and the general malady 
 to the effect of the organic dye in one of those red woolen 
 chest and back comforters which are commonly worn in 
 cold weather. On removing the comforter aU the symp- 
 toms at once ceased. 
 
 These dyes, wherever they come directly in contact with 
 12 
 
122 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 the skin, are very objectionable, though fortunately not 
 readily absorbed. It is probable that their influence is most 
 commonly exerted when in the stockings, on account of the 
 perpetual movement and friction about the feet and legs. 
 
 The Sead-Dress. — Custom and fashion among " enlight- 
 ened " nations require the use of hats and bonnets that are 
 more for show than for comfort or protection. In this mat- 
 ter the Chinese and the Turks might give us some useful 
 lessons. Their head-dress does give protection. The fash- 
 ionable hat worn by an American protects the crown of the 
 head partially, but leaves the ears and the occiput thor- 
 oughly exposed. Unless ventilated, as some are now, it 
 keeps the head in an atmosphere of confined air which read- 
 ily becomes impure and harmful. 
 
 Our summer hats are better. The light straw shelters 
 the head, while it reflects the sun's rays ; and the broad 
 brim measurably shades the eyes. Persons much exposed 
 to the sun wiU find a great advantage in carrying a hand- 
 kerchief in the hat, or, even better, a wet sponge, or green 
 leaves. 
 
 The Turk's turban and the Chinaman's conical bamboo 
 hat are far better than our male head-dresses, and we com- 
 mend their introduction to the fashion-makers. As ladies' 
 hats and bonnets do not seem to be intended for any use, 
 but only for ornament, we will not discuss them. We may 
 put in one word of commendation, however, for the nubes, 
 or other such becoming head-dresses which the ladies of- 
 ten wear at night when going to evening entertainments. 
 These may be made to protect at once head, ears, neck, and 
 throat of the wearers, and to save them from attacks of 
 neuralgia or more formidable maladies. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 EXERCISE OR WORK.— INFLUENCE OF OCCUPATION 
 UPON LONQEVITY.— LIMIT TO LABOR. 
 
 Section 1. — Exercise oe "Work. 
 
 " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. . . . With labor and 
 toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life." 
 
 Here is an injunction from which man can never depart 
 widely with impunity. The physical frame wiU perish 
 unless in some way it be kept in action in general, and in 
 its various parts. Work and rest, as pleasure and pain, are 
 important among the component parts of human existence. 
 
 " The first divine law of Nature," says the philosopher 
 Schlegel, " if we may so speak, by virtue of which labor 
 and struggle became from the beginning the destiny of man, 
 has retained its full force through all succeeding ages, and 
 is applicable alike to every class and every nation, to each 
 individual as well as to mankind in general, to the most 
 important as to the most insignificant relations of society. 
 He who weakly shrinks from the struggle, who will offer 
 no resistance, who will endure no labor nor fatigue, can 
 neither fulfill his own vocation, whatever it be, nor con- 
 tribute aught to the general welfare of mankind." 
 
 Labor may be wearisome, but it is not so wearisome as 
 idleness. Besides, the weariness of labor, when not exces- 
 sive, brings wholesome sleep, good appetite, and good di- 
 gestion. " The sleep of the laboring-man is sweet, whether 
 he eat little or much ; but the abundance of the rich will 
 not suffer him to sleep," says the wise man. 
 
 There must be physical exertion, and that in no stinted 
 
124 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 measure. Where the bread is not earned by the sweat of 
 the brow, physical culture becomes a necessity. It must be 
 a matter of education in early life, and habit in after-life. 
 Mind is superior to matter indeed, but mind must have a 
 basis to rest upon. The nervous maladies so prevalent and 
 so damaging among our females would be greatly abated 
 by changing some of the school-hours of girls to hours of 
 exercise in the open air. Walking is one of the best forms 
 of exercise, which may be varied, when practicable, by 
 riding on horseback. Walking develops the lower limbs, 
 while riding, somewhat briskly, tends to develop the mus- 
 cles of the arms and chest. Both forms promote capillary 
 and secretory action. Both give successions of shocks, 
 more or less felt, to all the organs of the living frame. 
 Thus absorption and nutrition are promoted, and waste and 
 repair go on energetically. Deep inspirations, induced by 
 physical efforts, by a well-known physiological process in- 
 volving the relations between the hepatic and cardiac cir- 
 culation, promote portal circulation, and thereby stimulate 
 hepatic function ; or, in other words, exert a true chola- 
 gogue influence. 
 
 Smart and vigorous exercise should be taken every day, 
 in open air if possible. A walk, a ride, a drive, rowing, 
 boating, the use of clubs or dumb-bells, and such measures, 
 are suitable for persons who do not work manually for their 
 daily bread. When a student wearies of books, of read- 
 ing or writing, he should turn aside from them for a time, 
 to exert his muscles. The change soon relieves mental 
 weariness and the cramped and contracted sensation about 
 the chest that attends upon a prolonged session. Mr. Wil- 
 liam Cullen Bryant was in the habit in the summer of doing 
 some light work on the farm or in the garden, as a relief 
 to study. He very prudently, however, avoided over-heavy 
 or fatiguing labor. Violent exertion is never necessary 
 for health ; in some respects it is more dangerous than 
 keeping quite at rest, the error of the other extreme. 
 
INFLUENCE OF OCCUPATION UPON LONGEVITY. 125 
 
 Passive Exercise. — There are persons not equal to any 
 active exercise, who are benefited by the passive forms, 
 such as riding in an easy carriage, or sailing on smooth 
 waters. These do not directly promote muscular vigor, but 
 by affording change of air and scene they are often of great 
 benefit to invalids and children. "We often see, in Balti- 
 more, children in a state of extreme exhaustion, apparently 
 almost in a dying condition, as from summer-complaint, 
 marvelously revived by a steamboat excursion on the Chesa- 
 peake, or going away for a few miles on the cars. Other 
 causes no doubt cooperate in this happy result, as change 
 of air and scene, but the very motion is beneficial. Deli- 
 cate persons will rarely bear, in fact, any severe exercise. 
 The exhaustion which follows imprudent attempts is more 
 pernicious than the exercise is salutary. Sometimes, indeed, 
 absolute repose is called for. Dr. Weir Mitchell, of Phila- 
 delphia, has happily restored invalids by a course of sys- 
 tematic rest ; but in his cases this was a therapeutic, not 
 an hygienic agency. 
 
 There are many morbid conditions in which severe ex- 
 ercise should be avoided, as in organic diseases of the heart ; 
 yet such valetudinarians are rather benefited than injured 
 by m^oderate exercise. 
 
 Withal, there is no doubt that, in general terms, active 
 exercise, in the open air preferably, is essential to the pres- 
 ervation of health and the prevention of disease. It tends 
 to prevent, inter alia, dyspepsia and consumption, those two 
 formidable enemies to human health and life. Its agency 
 is more than preventive, for it is often curative also. 
 
 Section 2. — Influence of Occupation upon Longevity. 
 
 It is shown by many statistical observers that longevity 
 is best promoted by labor in the open air. Practical farm- 
 ers have the best average longevity ; closely confined work- 
 men the lowest. 
 
126 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 Thus we find in one tabulated statement the following 
 rates : 
 
 Tears. 
 
 1. Cultivators of the earth, average 61.89 
 
 2. Active mechanics in open air 60.42 
 
 3. Active mechanics in shops 47.61 
 
 4. Inactive mechanics in shops 41.64 
 
 6. Mechanics, trades not specified 44.44 
 
 6. Employed on the ocean 46.06 
 
 1. Laborers without trades 44.22 
 
 8. Teamsters, expressmen, etc 42.93 
 
 9. Professional men 48,11 
 
 10. Merchants, financiers, etc 47.34 
 
 The longest terms are allowed to farmers and mechanics 
 in the open air ; the shortest to inactive mechanics in shops. 
 Printers are, unfortunately, among the short-term men ; 
 their (American) average is hut 32.03, while in Great 
 Britain, whatever may be the cause, their average is bet- 
 ter, being 46.21. It would seem that being engaged in 
 the " art preservative of all arts " is not preservative of the 
 health of those who thereby earn their daily bread. 
 
 It would be easy to show, in extenso, how much better 
 it would be for young men in selecting their pursuits to 
 take more to agriculture and horticulture, to work in the 
 open fields, than to seek occupation in the crowded cities. 
 A respectable farmer, known to the writer, gave up his farm 
 for an office to which he was unfortunately elected by the 
 partiality of his fellow-citizens. The good farmer became 
 a faithful officer, and no clerk under his supervision worked 
 more closely at the desk than himself. Within two years 
 he was taken with a disease that he had only known pre- 
 viously by name ; for, of course, he had heard of dyspepsia. 
 In four years he was completely broken down. He retired 
 from office, which he never should have accepted, too late 
 for his own good, for he enjoyed good health no more dur- 
 ing the remainder of his life. 
 
 Hard work, with inadequate compensation, is more com- 
 
LIMIT TO LABOR. 127 
 
 mon and more destructive in cities than in the country. 
 It sends off hecatombs innumerable. It pretty nearly fills 
 the cup of misery by privations, thus stated by Bouchardat, 
 involving — 1. Privation of heat-producing aliments; 2. 
 Privation of heat-giving fuel ; 3. Privation of heat-saving 
 clothes, as good woolen garments ; and, 4. Privation of 
 "warm and comfortable dwelling-houses. 
 
 "We have seen so far but little in this country of exces- 
 sive labor with remuneration insufficient for at least the 
 necessaries of life. With the great resources of America, 
 and the unoccupied soil inviting laborers to plant and enjoy 
 the fruits of the earth without stint or hinderance, many 
 generations ought to pass before America can know, but 
 exceptionally, what has been but too well known among 
 the masses in every country, and especially in every city, of 
 Europe. Human overwork has not yet been naturalized 
 among us. Its influences, with want, are thus summarily 
 and pretty accurately stated by Dr. Richardson : " The 
 majority of fatal diseases arising from overwork are now 
 discovered. Give a human being overwork and deficient 
 food, and he is the victim of diarrhoea and dysenteiy. Give 
 him overwork and bad air and food, and he is the victim 
 of consumption. Give him over mental work, with what- 
 ever air and food, and he is the victini of brain-disease 
 and of one or the other of its sequences — ^insanity, paraly- 
 sis, diabetes, premature death in any case ; death by sui- 
 cide not unfrequently. Give him overwork pui-ely physi- 
 cal, with air, with food, and the laboring heart, trying to 
 keep up against its weariness, succumbs ; and so the over- 
 worked smith, boatman, or wood-heaver, falls suddenly, not 
 more honored than the prize-fighter of to-day, or the fleet- 
 slave and gladiator of a past and more barbarous age." 
 
 Section' 3.— Limit to Laboe. 
 
 It was Sir Robert Peel, we believe, who used to assert 
 that no man failed in life who worked seven days in the week. 
 
128 HEALTH, AKD HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 This may be taken as a valuable hint, but really the wisdom 
 of the remark is more apparent than real. The mind and 
 the body want rest, and moreover want, even need, recrea- 
 tion. Six days of labor and one day of rest are the tei-ms 
 allowed by the authority which decreed that man should 
 forever earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. The 
 French philosophers, in the days of their revolutionary 
 triumph, substituted the tenth day for the seventh. It is 
 said that the change acted unfavorably both on man and on 
 the lower animals employed in his service. Thus it appears 
 that the divine ordinances pertaining to labor are immutable. 
 
 Eight to ten hours a day given to labor of mind or body 
 is quite as much as should be usually given ; and then the 
 seventh day must be given to rest. 
 
 The late Prof. Chew, in his instructive work on " Medi- 
 cal Education," tells of German students who. devoted 
 for life sixteen hours a day to study ; and " how Budseus, 
 through the whole of his life, up to the age of seventy- 
 three, studied also sixteen hours every day, -except the day 
 of his marriage, when he was so annoyed and overpowered, 
 as he said, by the womenkind, that, sad to relate, he accom- 
 plished only fourteen hours ; " but we suspect that such 
 profound scholars are half asleep during at least half the 
 time of apparent study. Prof. Chew says he was called to 
 advise a medical student, whom he questioned as to his 
 habits of life. "He replied that he had been studying 
 industriously all the session, and endeavoring to do his best ; 
 that he was constantly thinking of the final examination, 
 and generally read twenty-six hours a day! " He saw amaze- 
 ment expressed in the professor's face, whereupon he ex- 
 plained : he did not read twenty-six hours in any one day, 
 but he often read twenty-six hours " right ahead without 
 stopping." The professor advised him straightway to aban- 
 don such extraordinary studies, fearing that, instead of going 
 ahead, he would go lackward in learning by such immod- 
 erate exertions. 
 
LIMIT TO LABOB. 129 
 
 Labor, moderate rational labor of mind or body, or both, 
 conduces wonderfully to health and contentment. Artifi- 
 cial life has indeed imposed upon some men more than they 
 can well bear, and from some it has taken the load alto- 
 gether. Both extremes are deplorable. Industry gives 
 force and vigor to life, and, within just limits and well 
 regulated, it is among the prime essentials for the preser- 
 vation of man's physical and mental and moral well-being. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FOOD OF MAN.— ACCESSORY FOOD.— MANNER OP 
 EATING.— TEA AND COFFEE. 
 
 Section 1. — The Food op Man : Flesh. — Fish. — Bbead. 
 
 — Vegetables. — Fruits. 
 
 Man is sometimes called an omnivorous animal, as the 
 animal, the vegetable, and the mineral world contribute 
 habitually and directly to his sustenance. 
 
 It is generally conceded that man is designed to live on 
 mixed food, that is, on animal and vegetable food ; both of 
 these forms contributing at the same time a proportion of 
 inorganic matter which is usually only supplied to the ani- 
 mal frame through vegetable matter. 
 
 Vegetables are intermediate between the animal king- 
 dom and the inorganic world ; and, by chemical changes 
 effected through their intervention, the inorganic is made 
 subservient to the nutrition of the animal kingdom, " It is 
 their function," says Carpenter, " to combine the oxygen, 
 hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen of the inorganic world 
 into organic compounds, which not only serve as the ma- 
 terials of their own growth, but also as the food of animals 
 whose existence is entirely dependent on them, since they 
 possess no such combining power. It is from the water, 
 carbonic acid, and ammonia, supplied by the atmosphere, 
 and by the soil in which they are fixed, that plants derive 
 these elements. On the other hand, the animal, making use 
 of the ternary and quaternary compounds which have been 
 elaborated by plants, is continually restoring their elements 
 to the inorganic world in the very forms which they ori- 
 
THE FOOD OF MAN. 131 
 
 ginally possessed, for the excretion of water, carbonic acid, 
 and ammonia, is constantly taking place in the animal body 
 during life, as the result of those changes in which its pe- 
 culiar activity consists. And thus is sustained that balance 
 between animal and vegetable nutrition which is found to 
 be the more wonderful and complete, the more carefully it 
 is scrutinized." 
 
 The inorganic world, then, in general terms, supplies 
 nutriment to the vegetable world, which in its turn yields 
 nutriment to the animal world. Yet some animals derive 
 their supplies only from other animals, in whom grass has 
 literally become flesh. The green herb takes its food from 
 the earth and the air ; the lamb devours the herb, the lion 
 devours the lamb. By a wonderful provision of Nature, 
 all the elements of supply thus taken in by herb, lamb, or 
 lion, are restored to the sources from which they were de- 
 rived, to the earth and to the air, and thus the cycle of con- 
 struction and dissolution continues in its revolving course 
 unchanged through all ages. There is neither loss nor gain 
 in the sum total of matter, which in itself is never exhausted 
 nor worn out, nor renewed, its only changes being in place 
 or form. 
 
 3ome years ago the great chemist Liebig introduced a 
 theory which divides all food into aliments containing nitro- 
 gen and aliments destitute of nitrogen. Those which con- 
 tain nitrogen are considered alone capable of forming or- 
 ganized tissues. They are therefore designated as plastic ele- 
 ments of nutrition. Albumen, fibrin, and casein, are in this 
 category. Those aliments which do not contain nitrogen 
 are supposed to serve another purpose in the living econo- 
 my : they do not form tissues, but they are inservient to 
 respiration and the production of animal heat ; hence they 
 may be called aliments of respiration, or, otherwise, heat- 
 making food. Oil and sugar are aliments of this kind. Lie- 
 big, then, divided foods into the azotized or nitrogenized 
 on the one hand, and the non-azotized or non-nitrogenizcd 
 
132 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 on the other — the nitrogenized food being plastic or tis- 
 sue-forming, the non-nitrogenized being aplastic or heat- 
 forming. 
 
 This theory was widely accepted for a time, and still 
 has adherents, although known to be but partially tenable. 
 Plastic forms of food become respiratory ; and non-nitro- 
 genized foods, or hydrocarbons, take a part in tissue-con- 
 struction. There are some curious changes in the process 
 of chylification. The chyle in the small chyliferous vessels 
 contains a larger amount of fat which is non-nitrogenized 
 than has been obviously taken in with the food ; but as it 
 passes onward the fat decreases proportionately, while there 
 is an increase of the nitrogenized elements, so that the heat- 
 making food becomes converted, without further appreci- 
 able accessions, into plastic or tissue-forming food. 
 
 Inorganic matters are usually contributed to the animal 
 through the vegetable world, but they may be taken in 
 more directly. A man does not take lime, for example, 
 from the earth, as a plant does, but he may take it in lime- 
 water, or in any water more or less impregnated with lime. 
 His organism will suffer if he fails to get a sufficient quan- 
 tity of this inorganic element. He takes habitually chloride 
 of sodium, as an essential and not as an accidental ingre- 
 dient in his food. The wild animals of woods and prairies 
 seek this inorganic food at salt-licks or salt-springs. 
 
 We may derive iron directly from animal or vegetable 
 food ; or, if we do not, or get it in insufficient quantities, 
 the deficiency may be made up by taking it in chalybeate 
 waters or otherwise. Liebig says truly, " It s quite cer- 
 tain that, if iron be excluded from the food, organic life 
 cannot be supported." 
 
 We take in oxygen from the air through the pulmonary 
 cells, and its influence is felt immediately in vivifying the 
 blood. 
 
 Many such instances may be adduced to show that ani- 
 mals may and do take inorganic elements into the system for 
 
THE FOOD OF MAN. 133 
 
 the purposes of nutrition independently of the aid of vegeta- 
 bles. Yet the general rule holds that animal life is supplied 
 •with inorganic matter principally through the intervention 
 of vegetables which first derive and then transmit it. 
 
 There is one aliment 'which contains within itself all the 
 essentials of food — water, nitrogenous matter, sugar, oil, 
 phosphate of lime, and other salts. This aliment is milk, 
 in which, in the language of Dr. Prout, " we find a model 
 of what an alimentary substance should be — a kind of pro- 
 totype, as it were, of nutritious elements in general." 
 
 We see abundant evidence in Nature that milk does 
 supply all that is necessary to animal existence, as all young 
 mammals live upon it for a time exclusively. It will sup- 
 port adult life better than any other substance or element 
 used alone. As a rule, the adult requires the addition of 
 solid food. To this there are exceptions, not only with in- 
 valids but even with persons in full health. An African 
 traveler asserts that the strongest man he ever knew scarcely 
 ever touched animal flesh ; he was a Dane, whose chief diet 
 was thick sour milk, by the gallon, tea, and coffee. 
 
 " The proportions which the basic parts (of food) should 
 bear to each other," says Dr. Richardson, " are taught us 
 by Nature herself in milk. In that aliment, from its hu- 
 man source, the colloidal matter is present in the propor- 
 tion of three, the combustible of six, the salts of one, and 
 the water of ninety per cent." 
 
 " The solid constituents of food," says this author, " are 
 represented to us in their purest and most natural form in 
 com, in which they exist as gluten (colloidal substance) for 
 building, as starch for combustion, and as phosphatic salts 
 for skeleton-food. The fluid menstruum is simply and 
 naturally presented to us in pure water." 
 
 As bread and milk, or bread and butter, and water, con- 
 tain all that is necessary for wholesome nutrition, parents 
 may readily understand that it is the best combination of 
 food they can allow to their little children. If these young 
 
134 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 subjects were more nearly limited to such diet, and other- 
 wise were governed by a few of the plainest laws of hygiene, 
 we would no longer see haK of the children born into the 
 world carried off before the completion of the first decade 
 of years. 
 
 We need not dwell longer upon the alimentary princi- 
 ples. It is understood that albuminous (coUoidal), oleagi- 
 nous, and saccharine elements are essential to animal nutri- 
 tion, and that they must go together. 'So one suffices, nor 
 do any two. Besides these, inorganic matters are required. 
 Those which form necessary parts of the organism must be 
 supplied, from whatever source derived. Thus lime, phos- 
 phorus, and iron, are necessary constituents of our animal 
 frame. Chloride of sodium is indispensable. These ele- 
 ments are furnished, for the most part, in some of the ordi- 
 nary forms of food. If deficient, the defect must be made 
 up systematically. There is unfortunately some pains taken 
 occasionally to remove wholesome materials from food. 
 This happens when the phosphate of lime, which enters into 
 the composition of wheat, is rejected by excessive refine- 
 ment in making flour. The defect is compensated in some 
 families by the use of cracked wheat, boiled, as an article 
 of food. 
 
 We may now consider food in the various forms in 
 which it is used by civilized man, and this is not the least 
 among the important considerations of hygiene. Good 
 health depends greatly upon it, and, if Galen was right, 
 even good morals, for he believed that he could cure bad 
 characters by the regulation of food. No doubt many 
 could be benefited by the distribution of food, as, e. g., 
 among our refractory aborigines, whose raids upon the 
 stores of Western farmers and traders would be promptly 
 brought to an end if an honest Galen were to furnish their 
 rations, 
 
 Meatj fish, bread, the ordinary vegetables, the accessories 
 which are intended to make food more digestible or more 
 
THE FOOD or MAN. 135 
 
 palatable, and various liquid ingesta, demand attention. 
 The manner of preparing them for use, or cookery, will 
 have some consideration. 
 
 Flesh-meat contains within itself a variety of alimentary 
 substances or principles, as albumen, fibrin, syntonin, fat, 
 gelatin, saline matters, and osmazome (or the various nitro- 
 genized products from the process of cooking which have 
 been called by that name), which gives flavor to cooked 
 meats and soups. The nitrogenous parts go principally 
 to the construction and repair of tissues, and also, as de- 
 composed in the blood, take a part in the maintenance of 
 animal heat, and influence the oxidation of other constit- 
 uents. Fatty matters are more engaged in the mainte- 
 nance of animal heat, while they contribute in a less de- 
 gree to convert food into tissue. The oxidation of fat in 
 the blood tends to give the force which is shown in all 
 active movements. 
 
 Saline matters are important in the transference of or- 
 ganic constituents throughout the body. 
 
 Fresh meat is a great force-producer. In Playfair's 
 " Dietaries of Well-fed Operatives," the English sailor has, 
 as we are informed, 5 ounces of flesh-forming food, 2.57 
 ounces of fats, and 14.39 of starch and sugar daily, or 20.40 
 ounces of carbonaceous food, and 5 ounces of nitrogenous, 
 or 25.40 ounces in all of solid food daily. Blacksmiths have 
 35.70 ounces daily, and prize-fighters, training, 20.50 ounces 
 daily ; but these last have, notwithstanding the restricted 
 amount in the total, 9.80 ounces of flesh-formers, 3.10 ounces 
 of fats, and 3.27 ounces of starch and sugar. More physical 
 power is thus gained on a smaller amount of food when 
 directed with a certain design. 
 
 Beef is estimated to contain 1,854 grains of carbon and 
 189 grains of nitrogen to the pound ; mutton gives 1,900 
 grains of carbon, 189 grains of nitrogen ; fat pork, 4,113 
 grains of carbon, 106 grains of nitrogen ; dry bacon, 5,987 
 grains of carbon, 95 grains of nitrogen. 
 
136 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 The carbon and nitrogen thus supplied to the organism 
 are made available by combining with oxygen, whereby 
 nutrition is principally accomplished. 
 
 Dr. Williams ("Principles of Medicine"), treating of 
 food, says meat contains the albuminous, oily, and gelati- 
 nous principles, besides creatin and other soluble extractive 
 matters, also probably nutritious. The object in keeping 
 and cooking meat is to render it so tender that it may be 
 easily softened by the gastric juice, and all processes which 
 go beyond, or interfere with this result, render it less whole- 
 some. Thus salting, pickling, hanging until it becomes 
 tainted, and hardening by oYercooking or fast boiling, which 
 corrugates and toughens the fibre, are so many ways of 
 spoiling meat for the purposes of digestion, and rendering 
 much of its nutriment unavailable. The flesh of young 
 adult animals presents the greatest amount of fibrinous 
 material ; that of younger animals contains more gelatin 
 and fat ; and that of very old ones is tough from the prev- 
 alence of more condensed fibrous textures, which, however, 
 are converted into gelatin by boiling, and are therefore 
 useful in the formation of soups. Different kinds of ani- 
 mal food vary very much in their composition, even when 
 the lean parts only are selected. Thus beef and pork con- 
 tain a large proportion of fat ; mutton has somewhat less, 
 and in the flesh of fowl, game, and white fish, there is only 
 a very small amount. This affords an explanation of the 
 fact that the latter articles make the best food for persons 
 of weak stomach. The lean of veal contains very little fat, 
 but it often disagrees. Yeal well stewed with rice is less 
 unwholesome than in other modes of cooking. Soups and 
 broths, when deprived of excess of fat, are very useful arti- 
 cles of nourishment, used as auxiliaries to solid food, but 
 they are insufficient for a working dietary. 
 
 Veal cooked with rice and flavored with curry proves 
 to many persons both wholesome and grateful food. 
 
 Eggs may be considered with meat, their principal con- 
 
THE FOOD OF MAN. 137 
 
 stituents being albumen and oily matter. They also con- 
 tain saline elements. As a general rule, eggs, when sub- 
 mitted for a short time to suflSoient heat to coagulate their 
 albumen slightly, are very wholesome and nutritious. The 
 oil contained in the yolk sometimes disagrees with delicate 
 stomachs. 
 
 According to Dr. Beaumont's researches, eggs are most 
 readily digested when raw and whipped, disappearing from 
 the stomach when thus prepared in an hour and thirty min- 
 utes, while hard-boiled and fried eggs require three hours 
 and thirty minutes. Koasted eggs require two hours and 
 fifteen minutes, and soft-boiled three hours, in the process 
 of digestion. 
 
 Raw eggs have a laxative and cooked eggs a constipat- 
 ing tendency. 
 
 A reminder may here be inserted that, on inspection, 
 fresh eggs are more transparent at the centre, and stale 
 eggs more at the top. In a solution of one part of common 
 salt to ten of water, good eggs sink, while those which are 
 stale swim. In old eggs there is an air-space at the large 
 end. 
 
 Beef and pork are generally suitable for strong stomachs 
 and laborious life. The white meat of fowls, as of chicken, 
 and fish, are better adapted to the uses of delicate persons, 
 and those whose lives are not laboriou\ 
 
 No small part of the excellence of meat depends upon 
 the cooking. Heat makes important changes in the meat, 
 and prepares it to be readily acted on by the digestive or- 
 gans. A great degree of cold also makes changes which 
 render food more acceptable. People living in high lati- 
 tudes, and arctic explorers, are very partial to frost-cooked 
 food. 
 
 Boiling, roasting, broiling, baking, and frying, are the 
 usual modes of cooking meat. The savory constituents of 
 flesh are contained in its juices ; the fibre, in the natural 
 state, being steeped in albuminous fluids, which are coagu- 
 
138 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 lated by heat, by wMch process the contracuon and harden- 
 ing of the enveloped meat-fibres are prevented. According 
 to Liebig, meat is underdone or bloody when it has been 
 heated throughout only to the temperature of coagulating 
 albumen, or 133° Fahr. ; and it is quite done, or cooked, 
 when heated through its whole mass to between 150° and 
 165° Fahr. 
 
 There is an important matter in regard to the thorough 
 cooking of meat which has only had full appreciation in the 
 last few years. In the first place, meat in any way diseased 
 or tainted is, if not quite safe, at least much less likely to 
 injure the consumer, when well cooked. But, secondly, 
 there are often parasites in the flesh of living animals — beef, 
 mutton, pork, and even fish — which retain their vitality not 
 only after slaughter, but also after imperfect cooking, and 
 which, passing thus into the human stomach, are liable to 
 produce not only dangerous but fatal diseases. A scientific 
 acquaintance with these formidable parasites has been ac- 
 quired by the use of the microscope. A practical acquaint- 
 ance has been made with them through their fatal agency 
 by consumers of raw or imperfectly cooked meat in many 
 communities, especially in Germany. The trichina disease, 
 the most common of this class, has been observed in all 
 countries, the parasite Trichina spiralis often infesting 
 pork. These parasites, have, unfortunately, a great tenacity 
 of life. Salting or other mode of curing meat does not de- 
 stroy them, but thorough cooking does. Meats should be 
 subject to scientific inspection when offered for sale ; and 
 then and always, for prudential reasons, properly, that is 
 thoroughly, cooked,' before being consumed. 
 
 Roasting. — When meat is roasted the outer layer of albu- 
 men is coagulated, and thus all the contained juices are pre- 
 vented from escaping. Roasting should be accomplished 
 before a fire in full force, so that the investment of coagu- 
 lated albumen shall be quickly accomplished before there is 
 a chance for exudation of juices. If the juices escape, the 
 
THE FOOD OF MAN. 139 
 
 meat becomes proportionately dry, unsavory, and innutri- 
 tious. 
 
 taking. — Baking meat has a similar influence to roast- 
 ing, but does not so well preserve the flavor. 
 
 Frying. — Frying is a coarse manner of preparing meat, 
 which generally renders it difficult of digestion, besides im- 
 pairing its nutritive qualities. In all cooking processes the 
 fat of the meat is liquefied, but at a very high temperature 
 the fat is changed into acid and acrid matters, which are 
 irritant to the stomach, and little fit for digestion and as- 
 similation. Frying, then, is, for the most part, an objec- 
 tionable form of cookery. 
 
 Sroiling. — Broiling is a form of roasting, and, when 
 done quickly and properly, is an excellent manner of pre- 
 paring meat for the digestive organs. 
 
 Soiling. — Boiling affects meat according to the process 
 adopted. If the joint be placed in water actually boiling, 
 the albumen of the surface is coagulated, and the inner 
 part of the meat is cooked by a steaming process. All the 
 juices are thus preserved. If the flesh be introduced into 
 the boiler, according to Liebig, when the water is in a state 
 of brisk ebullition, and if the boiling be kept up for a few 
 minutes, and the pot then put in a warm place, so that 
 the temperature of the water is kept up at 158° to 165° 
 Fahr., we have the united conditions for giving to the flesh 
 the qualities which best fit it for being eaten. 
 
 But if meat be placed in cold water, which is then to be 
 boiled, its condition is quite changed. As no albuminous 
 investment is coagulated over the surface, the nutritive 
 juices escape from the flesh into the water, so that the meat 
 is impoverished, and its fibres become tough and hard. 
 This is illustrated in the preparation of soup. Soup-meat, 
 or houilli, is remarkably poor and innutritions. 
 
 If the object is, however, to get the nutritious quality 
 of the meat in the form of soup, the meat, cut in small 
 slices, may be slowly boiled so that its juices may be ex- 
 
140 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 tracted and taken up by the -water. The water may be 
 slowly and gradually heated to the boiling-point, at which 
 it may be maintained for a few minutes ; the meat may 
 then be strained and pressed, so that nearly all its nutritive 
 qualities will be yielded to the soup. 
 
 Beef-tea, as it is called, and the extract of beef, are 
 much in use with invalids, and every housekeeper should 
 know how to prepare them. 
 
 Beef-tea is a delicate soup. It may be made by the fol- 
 lowing process : Take of lean beef, cut up into smaU pieces, 
 one pound, water one quart. Boil for twenty minutes, con- 
 stantly removing the scum as it rises to the surface. Strain 
 when cold. Salt or spices may be added according to cir- 
 cumstances. Or it may be prepared more eligibly by add- 
 ing one pound of lean beef, cut in small fragments, to a 
 pint of cold water, in a covered vessel. Place the vessel 
 near the fire for about two hours, so that the water becomes 
 slowly heated ; at the end of two hours, boil for half an 
 hour, strain, and flavor to suit the taste. 
 
 There are various methods of preparing beef in extracts 
 or essences for invalids, but these have been greatly super- 
 seded, of late years, by ready-made preparations, such as 
 Liebig's "Extract" and Valentine's " Meat- Juice," John- 
 son's and other forms, which have the advantages of being 
 always ready for use, of convenience, and of uniformity. 
 
 Liebig's broth is a good preparation, made as follows : 
 For one portion of broth take half a pound of freshly-killed 
 meat (beef or chicken), cut it into small pieces, and add to it 
 one and an eighth pound of pure water, to which have been 
 added four drops of muriatic acid and thirty to sixty grains 
 of common salt ; mix them well together. After standing an 
 hour, strain the whole through a conical hair-sieve, allowing 
 it to pass through without pressing or squeezing. The por- 
 tion passing through first being cloudy, it is again to be 
 poured through the sieve, and this process repeated until it 
 becomes perfectly clear. TJpon the residue of meat remain- 
 
THE POOD OF MAN. 141 
 
 ing in the sieve pour half a pound of pure water in small 
 portions. In this manner about one pound of liquid extract 
 of meat is obtained, of a red color, and of a pleasant, meat- 
 broth taste. It is administered to the sick cold, by the cup- 
 ful, according to their inclination. It must not be heated, 
 as it becomes cloudy thereby, and a thick coagulum of 
 meat-albumen and haematin is deposited. 
 
 As young housekeepers do not know how to select meat, 
 we will present a few hints here, as furnished by Dr. George 
 Wilson : 
 
 1. Good meat should present a marbled appearance, 
 from intermixture of streaks of fat with muscle. This 
 shows that the animal has been well fed. 
 
 2. The color of the muscle should neither be too pale 
 nor too dark. If pale and moist, it indicates that the animal 
 was young or diseased ; and if dark or livid, it shows that 
 in all probability the animal was not slaughtered, but died 
 with the blood in it. 
 
 3. Both muscle and fat should be firm to the touch, not 
 moist or sodden, and the latter should be free from hsemor- 
 rhagic points. 
 
 4. Any juice exuding from the meat should be small in 
 quantity, of a reddish tint, and give a distinctly acid reaction 
 to test-paper. Good meat should dry on the surface after 
 standing a day or two. The juice of bad meat is alkaline 
 or neutral. 
 
 5. The muscular fasciculi should not be large and 
 coarse, nor should there be any mucilaginous or purulent- 
 looking fluid to be detected in the intermuscular cellular 
 tissue. 
 
 6. The odor should be slight, and not by any means disa- 
 greeable. An unpleasant odor indicates commencing putre- 
 factive change, or that the meat is diseased. By chopping 
 a portion of the meat into small pieces, and afterward 
 drenching it with warm water, any unpleasantness of odor 
 will be more readily detected. Another good plan is to 
 
143 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 thrust a long, clean knife into the flesh, and to smell it after 
 withdrawal. 
 
 Brain, liver, etc., should be carefully inspected. 
 
 Bad meat is usually sodden and flabby, with the fat 
 dirty or gelatinous looking, and the smell unpleasant or 
 sickly. 
 
 Sausages, with a bad smell or nauseous taste, an acid re- 
 action, or a soft interior consistence, are very dangerous, 
 and quite capable of poisoning the consumers. 
 
 Fish. — Fish, for the most part, forms light and nutri- 
 tious food, easy of digestion, though less nutritious than 
 meat. There are some ideas prevalent in regard to fish as 
 food which may receive a passing notice. Fish-eating peor 
 pie (ichthyophagi) are said to be more prolific than others ; 
 and fish-eaters are supposed to derive from that food a 
 quantity of phosphorus which is taken up by the brain and 
 nervous system, and thereby to obtain a degree of intellect- 
 ual superiority. These views are not supported by any 
 established facts. 
 
 Some fishes are directly poisonous, but they are found 
 mostly in the tropics, and need not be considered here. 
 The fishes brought to our markets are usually safe and 
 wholesome when in good condition, and at proper seasons. 
 Some fishes, as eels, are very oily, while others are com- 
 paratively free from oil, as the rock-fish ; and, in regard to 
 eating those which belong to one or the other category, the 
 individual must decide for himself which agrees or dis- 
 agrees with his own stomach. 
 
 Fish should be consumed while fresh, as they soon un- 
 dergo putrefactive changes when kept. This change may 
 be prevented by salting, but salting impairs their nutritious 
 properties. Of all solid food, white fish seems to give least 
 carbon (carbon 871, nitrogen 195), while red herrings give 
 1,435 grains per pound of carbon, and 217 grains of ni- 
 trogen. 
 
 Oysters are wholesome and nutritious. When raw, 
 
THE FOOD OF MAN. 143 
 
 broiled, roasted, or stewed, they are usually easy of diges- 
 tion ; when fried, they are apt to disagree with delicate 
 stomachs. To be wholesome, they should be consumed 
 when quite fresh. They cast their spawn in May or June, 
 after which they remain for a time in bad condition and 
 unfit for use. It is popularly said that they ought not to 
 be eaten during any month that has not an r in it. It were 
 better said, from Maryland and Virginia southward, that 
 they should not be eaten from the early part of April to 
 the latter part of October. The writer has attended many 
 cases of a choleraic character in persons who had eaten oys- 
 ters before the recurrence of autumnal frosts, even in Octo- 
 ber. He has seen all the gastro-enteric and nervous symp- 
 toms, called among the Spanish peoples of the "West Indies 
 by the name of siguatera, to designate a disease following 
 the consumption of poisonous fishes, induced by eating oys- 
 ters unseasonably. What has been said of oysters applies 
 equally "to lobsters and crabs. These marine luxuries all 
 change readily, and, if eaten out of season, or not perfectly 
 fresh, are liable to cause enteric disease, cholera-morbus, or 
 siguatera. 
 
 In calling any food wholesome or unwholesome, it may 
 be remarked, once for all, that such expressions are of gen- 
 eral but not of universal application. " What is one man's 
 meat is another man's poison," by exceptions to the general 
 law. Every man is bound to gain in these matters some 
 personal experience. It was a remark of Van Swieten's 
 that " to assert a thing to be wholesome, without a knowledge 
 of the condition of the person for whom it is intended, is 
 like a sailor pronouncing the wind to be fair, without know- 
 ing to what port the vessel is bound." 
 
 Bread. — This article of food, which now claims our at- 
 tention, has been justly designated "the staff of life." In 
 this country our bread is made of wheat, Indian-corn, or 
 rye. Wheat is composed of starch, of gluten, which has 
 many of the properties of animal matter, of a mucilaginous 
 
144 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 saccharine substance, of gum, and a notable proportion of 
 mineral constituents, as potash, magnesia, soda, lime, with 
 phosphoric acid, and other acids in combination. Oluten 
 is the body which gives tenacity to dough and bread. " It 
 seems," says Attfield, " to be a mixture of vegetable fibrin, 
 vegetable casein, and an albuminous matter termed glutin. 
 These substances and gluten itself are closely allied ; each 
 contains about sixteen per cent, of nitrogen. Wheaten flour 
 contains about seventy -two per cent, of starch and eleven of 
 gluten, as well as sugar, gum, fine bran, water, and ash." 
 
 These elements should all be preserved in the flour in 
 something near their natural proportions. They are all 
 needed for purposes of healthy nutrition. 
 
 The finest grades of flour now in use, as family flour, 
 have an excess of starch, with defect in the proportion of 
 gluten and phosphates. The defect is supplemented in many 
 families by the use of cracked wheat, hominy, oatmeal, etc. 
 This last is particularly rich in albuminoid or flesh-forming 
 constituents, containing nearly sixteen per cent. 
 
 Light or fermented bread is made of flour, water, yeast, 
 and salt, which are formed into a batter, and subjected for 
 some hours to a moderate heat. Certain chemical changes 
 occur ; among others the yeast sets up an active fermenta- 
 tion, by which the sugar of the flour is converted into al- 
 cohol that escapes in the form of gas, and into carbonic 
 acid. This carbonic acid, being diffused through the mass, 
 becomes entangled by the tenacious gluten of the dough, 
 and it is this retention of the gas that gives to bread its 
 lightness and sponginess. "When the dough is subjected to 
 further heat in baking, the carbonic acid expands, and fills 
 the loaf with vesicles, or eyes, as they are often called. 
 The more perfect this process, the better the bread. By 
 virtue of the spongy texture of the bread, the morsels as 
 eaten are brought more readily in contact with the gastric 
 juices. When bread is deficient in this sponginess, it is 
 said to be heavy, and it is then very difficult of digestion. 
 
THE FOOD OF MAN. 145 
 
 Bread should be thoroughly baked, and it is in best con- 
 dition for mastication and digestion when not warm, or un- 
 duly fresh. When recently taken from the oven, the vesic- 
 ular structure is easily destroyed, as one may observe by 
 crushing it in the hands. The same occurs in chewing it, 
 so that hot or fresh bread is much more liable to form a 
 heavy and indigestible mass in the stomach than bread in 
 which a moderate desiccation has made the vesicular struct- 
 ure more permanent. 
 
 Flour is apt to deteriorate by long keeping, principally 
 on account of absorption of moisture from the air. It should 
 be kept perfectly dry, otherwise a chemical change occurs 
 resulting in a change of a portion of the flour into dextrin 
 and gum, so that the bread made from it is heavy and sod- 
 den. According to Liebig, the addition of a portion of 
 lime-water to the dough, in making bread of such flour, 
 tends greatly to restore its normal condition. In Europe, 
 ground bone-dust sometimes enters into the composition of 
 bread for the purpose of enriching it with inorganic ingre- 
 dients. 
 
 Alum, sulphate of copper, and other chemicals, are add- 
 ed to bread by some bakers for special purposes — not for 
 the improvement of the bread, however. Alum makes the 
 bread whiter, and enables it to hold additional water in its 
 composition. In bread properly made, one hundred pounds 
 of flour give one hundred and thirty-six pounds of bread. 
 All bread should be light, sweet, porous, and not too fresh 
 when used. It should not be sour nor heavy. Sometimes a 
 stale loaf, somewhat sour, may be improved by slicing and 
 toasting, the heat in this process driving oflE the acid element. 
 
 JJnfermented bread is that which is made without the 
 use of yeast or leaven, or other ferment. Crackers and Ma- 
 ryland biscuit, so largely consumed in the Southern States, 
 are unleavened. This kind of bread agrees best with some 
 stomachs, but, in health, it is generally a mere matter of 
 taste between leavened and unleavened bread. 
 14 
 
146 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PEOMOTE IT. 
 
 Corn-meal makes a strong, nutritious bread, rich in oil, 
 but composed nearly entirely of starch, with little nitro- 
 genous matter. 
 
 Mye-Jiour also makes a strong, nutritious bread, but it is 
 rather heavy for a delicate stomach. A very good brown 
 bread may be made of mixed wheat and rye flour. As the 
 starch in wheat-flour tends to constipate, the coarser rye- 
 flour obviates this tendency. 
 
 No small part of the satisfaction or disaffection in life 
 depends upon the quality of the bread in use. 
 
 Vegetables. — We may pass briefly over the forms of 
 vegetable food, in common use. Dr. Beaumont tested the 
 digestibility of a large number of them with his remarkable 
 patient, St. Martin. Some of the results may seem a little 
 curious. Thus, cabbage-head, raw, required two hours and 
 thirty minutes for digestion ; the same with vinegar two 
 hours ; while boiled cabbage required four hours and thirty 
 minutes. Rice was digested (boiled) in one hour ; Irish 
 potatoes (boiled) in three hours and thirty minutes. Pota- 
 toes and rice abound in starch. Beans and peas are fari- 
 naceous vegetables. They contain starch, oil, and a nitro~ 
 genous matter sometimes called vegetable casein. They 
 are very nutritious, but not always easy of digestion. When 
 young and tender, they rarely disagree ; when old, they 
 can only be made fit for food by very prolonged boiling. 
 
 Cabbage is rich in albumen, and is, for the most part, a 
 wholesome article of food. It often disagrees, however, 
 with delicate stomachs, causing distressing flatulence. Many 
 persons can eat cold-slaw or sauerkraut with safety, who 
 cannot take cabbage in other forms. 
 
 Tomatoes generally agree well with a healthy stomach. 
 They are more refreshing than nutritious. Of cucumbers, 
 which are usually eaten raw, Dr. Paris observes, " They are 
 by far the most unwholesome of all raw vegetables, and 
 should be avoided as poison by dyspeptics." Raw cucumbers 
 should not be. eaten freely.;. but a few slices, nicely prepared. 
 
THE FOOD OF MAN. I47 
 
 may by most persons be eaten at breakfast as a salad, or 
 for giving, not for allaying, appetite. Turnips sometimes 
 cause flatulence, but generally the healthy stomach digests 
 them very well. Parsnips are nutritious and digestible. 
 Onions are nutritious and stimulating, but are differently 
 received by different stomachs. With some they always 
 disagree. With others they are always acceptable. Dr. 
 Paris says that onions appear to form the connecting link 
 between alimentary roots arid those used principally as con- 
 diments. They contain stimulating matter and withal a 
 considerable amount of nutritive material. When thor- 
 oughly boiled, the acrimony is driven off, and a sweet mu- 
 cilage remains. The French consider soupe d Toignon as 
 one of the best of restoratives. 
 
 Fruits. — There can be no general rule as to the whole- 
 someness of fruits. Those in common use among us, as 
 apples, pears, peaches, and grapes, are usually wholesome 
 when ripe and in good condition. They are not always 
 safe, however, with the invalid. Every physician has 
 occasion to observe the ill-effects which often result to 
 invalids from eating apples, for example, especially those 
 kept for winter use. Catarrhal affections are often aggra- 
 vated by the ingestion of uncooked apples, which persons 
 affected sometimes take for remedial purposes, under bad 
 advice. 
 
 Fruits eaten after meals are apt to disagree. When ta- 
 ken with milk or cream, the probability of disturbance of 
 the digestive function is increased. So far, however, as ad- 
 ditional food to a sufficient dinner may be concerned, nearly 
 all things taken by way of dessert are objectionable. In 
 other words, when the wants of nature are satisfied, a ra- 
 tional being should not continue to add food, which, in any 
 form, must be redundant, if not ill its very nature per- 
 nicious. Desserts should never be eaten except as apart of 
 the dinner ; that is, they should not be superadded to a 
 meal which is already sufficient. The quality of the dessert 
 
148 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 is sometimes blamed where the real fault is in the excessive 
 quantity of the food. 
 
 Many fruits are safe when freshly gathered, which soon 
 become unsafe in the market-house. Thus cherries when 
 eaten from the trees are much safer than when taken from 
 the hucksters' stores. 
 
 Section 2. — Accessoey Food : Condiments. — Buttee. — • 
 
 Oil. 
 
 Condiments are sometimes significantly called appetizers. 
 Hard work and attendant good appetite require little else 
 than common salt as a condiment, which should be plenti- 
 fully used. It was said by Plutarch that hunger and salt 
 were the only sauces known to the ancients ; and the very 
 word " sauce " is derived from the Latin word salsus — 
 "salted." In former times the laws of Holland required 
 prisoners to be kept on bread alone, without salt, as the 
 severest punishment that could be inflicted on them in that 
 moist climate. The result was horrible : the wretched 
 criminals are said to have been devoured by worms engen- 
 dered in their own stomachs. 
 
 Vinegar and lemon-juice are often used to promote 
 digestion, and indeed such acids seem necessary in the 
 absence of acidulous fruits and vegetables. In moderate 
 quantities, with most persons, their influence is to promote 
 digestion ; used in excess they impair digestion and cause 
 emaciation. Instances are known of the profuse use of 
 vinegar to reduce excess of fat in young ladies, with, as a 
 result, reduction of fat indeed, but, moreover, emaciation 
 and permanent loss of health. 
 
 PicMes of good quality may be used with discretion. 
 They certainly disagree with some individuals, who there- 
 fore denounce them ; but, nevertheless, they are not to be 
 rejected from table-use because some persons find them ob- 
 jectionable. 
 
 Aromatic Condiments. — ^Pepper, ginger, mustard, and 
 
MANNER OF EATING. 149 
 
 horseradish, are important accessory foods. Wholesome, 
 well-cooked food, on the one hand, and a good stomach, on 
 the other, may well dispense with these accessories. They 
 sometimes cause the consumption of more food than nature 
 requires (in health), and then their use is injurious. But 
 in the semi-invalid world with which we have to deal, there 
 are many stomachs with defective innervation and secre- 
 tions which are benefited by spices. The writer has found, 
 on shipboard, no condiment equal to capscium, or red pep- 
 per, dashed upon soup, when going distrustfully to the table 
 with a heavy sea on. 
 
 Butter and oil belong to the oleaginous condiments. 
 When sweet, they are eminently wholesome and nutritious; 
 when rancid, they cause indigestion. Melted butter is ob- 
 jectionable, from the fact that heat causes a new develop- 
 ment of fatty acids, which are irritant and indigestible. 
 Buttered toast, sometimes given to invalids in the form of 
 toast saturated with melted butter, is eminently objection- 
 able. 
 
 Olive-oil, used with us principally for dressing salads, is 
 for most persons a very wholesome article of diet. 
 
 It may be remembered that all oleaginous foods have 
 some of the valuable properties attributed, and justly, to 
 cod-liver oil. Wherever they can be duly and properly 
 assimilated, they are capable of exerting hygienic, prophy- 
 lactic, and curative influences. 
 
 SbCTIOK 3. — MAIOfEE OF EATING. 
 
 Food should be taken at regular intervals, in moderate 
 quantities, and it should be eaten slowly. Eating in haste 
 is a great cause of dyspepsia. Food to be well digested 
 should be thoroughly masticated and well mixed with the 
 salivary secretion, as the beginning of the digestive act. 
 The rapid eater allows no time for the necessary changes 
 to be accomplished in the mouth ; and, moreover, he eats 
 habitually, much more food than is either necessary or 
 
150 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 wholesome. THs rapid eating or bolting of food has tend- 
 ed to make Americans a dyspeptic people. In the economy 
 of health it is much wiser to give a little more time to eat- 
 ing than to eat more in less time ; and, moreover, it would 
 make men happier and more contented with their condition 
 in life, for nothing spoils the temper more than bad diges- 
 tion. "Remember, Sancho," said an errant philosopher, 
 " that the stomach is the laboratory in which the health of 
 the whole body is tempered, and therefore do not overload 
 it, but treat it with becoming discretion." 
 
 Learned hygeists and physiologists agree with this sen- 
 timent, only expressing it in more professional language. 
 " It appears," says Dr. Tilt, " that each separate ganglion 
 sends its contingent of nervous force to the central ganglia, 
 which reacts on the brain, and that the force with which 
 the ganglionic nervous system is endowed is as much cen- 
 tralized in the epigastric region as the intellectual faculties 
 are in the brain. Discordant as medical theories generally 
 are, it is singular how often the importance of considering 
 vital force as centralized in the epigastric region has been 
 prominently asserted. Galen and Femellius called it the 
 principal lever of the human forces ; Van Helmont there 
 placed his Archeus, or principal ruling power ; Wrisberg 
 and Lobstein treated it as the cerebrum abdominale ; Hun- 
 ter called it the sensitive centre, and the centre of sympa- 
 thies ; and Bichat, Broussais, etc., considered it the prime 
 conductor of nervous influence." 
 
 It has been said that the best promoter of digestion is a 
 contented mind ; and, on the other hand, it may be equally 
 well said that the rule acts in both ways. Haller called the 
 stomach the " conscience of the body," and this conscience 
 ought to be respected, instead of being wronged as it is 
 habitually. 
 
 Tea and Coffee. — The views in regard to these popular 
 beverages are very contradictory, even among medical men. 
 The simplest statement of the facts is, that one or both 
 
MANNER OF EATING. 151 
 
 are safe and wholesome for tlie great majority of adults, 
 provided they are used in moderation. Children should 
 be discouraged from their use ; or, if it he allowed, they 
 should be largely diluted with milk. Thein and caffein are 
 organic bases in tea and coffee respectively, and both are 
 potent nervines. It may be assumed as a fact that all such 
 agents are readily capable of acting injuriously on the ner- 
 vous system, if not used within the limits of discretion. 
 Many persons are dyspeptic from the use of the one or the 
 other of them. Tea is constipating, coffee is not. Both 
 are capable of inducing insomnia, and various nervous as 
 well as gastric disturbances. Careless housekeepers often 
 spoil tea by making it strong, which often means nothing 
 more nor less than driving off the grateful and refreshing 
 aroma, which is exactly what ought to be preserved, and 
 drawing all the astringency from the leaves, which makes 
 an infusion that could as well be derived from oak-bark or 
 gall-nuts. 
 
 Dr. Chambers, in his work on " The Indigestions," says, 
 " Much ill-health arises among women of the lower orders in 
 this country from the custom of sluicing themselves with 
 tea." It may be so in England, but some of the bad effects 
 are attributable to the causes that induce these women to 
 indulge so largely in that form of stimulant. 
 
 Briefly, tea and coffee are among the luxuries now be- 
 come necessaries in general society ; they greatly promote 
 the comfort of life ; and they only injure in exceptional 
 cases, or from excessive use. 
 
 " The ultimate destiny of food," says Dr. Wilson, " is 
 the development of heat, and other modes of motion, which 
 together constitute the physiological phenomena of animal 
 life. The potential energy with which the food is stored 
 becomes converted into actual or dynamic energy, and is 
 manifested in the body as heat, constructive power, nervo- 
 muscular action, mechanical motion, and the like. But, as 
 food also supplies the materials which are requisite for the 
 
152 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 development and maintenance of the living fabric, as well 
 as for the display of its various kinds of active energy, it 
 may be inferred that inorganic and organic substances are 
 both necessary. The organic alone are oxidizable, or capa- 
 ble of generating force, while the inorganic, though not oxi- 
 dizable, are essential to the metamorphosis of organic mat- 
 ter which takes place in the animal economy." 
 
 We have now passed in review many of the most im- 
 portant constituents of food, from whatever source derived, 
 and will make but little general commentary. As a fact of 
 common observation, most persons in the prosperous classes 
 consume too much food. Food must be proportioned to 
 work, and, if the relations be not preserved, the consumer 
 vdll inevitably suffer. Excessive food engenders dyspepsia ; 
 dyspepsia, not considered immediately dangerous to life, 
 certainly predisposes to many secondary maladies which 
 ruin the health, with or without inducing a prematurely 
 fatal issue. Haller's conscience of the body always warns a 
 man when nature has a suflBcient supply ; if he habitually 
 disregards this conscientious warning, he will in some form 
 surely pay the penalty. 
 
 All Nature furnishes food as it furnishes consumers, 
 from omnivorous man to the lowly chlorophyl body, which 
 and which alone feeds upon an exclusively mineral diet. 
 How immense, how wonderful, how unspeakable, the dis- 
 tance between the highest and the lowest of all that lives 
 visibly upon the face of the earth ! And there are con- 
 sumers for detrimental matters floating about us which 
 neither the eye of man unaided, nor assisted with his mys- 
 tery-searching microscopes, has ever scanned. There are 
 organisms associated with the decomposition and decay of 
 organic matter, " saprophytes," as Dr. Roberts calls them, 
 " whose special function in the order of Nature is to de- 
 stroy, not create, organic matter ; and they constitute not 
 the first but the last link in the biological chain. For, if 
 we regard the order of life as it now proceeds on the earth's 
 
MANNER OF EATING. 153. 
 
 surface, we may describe it as beginning with the chloro- 
 phyl body and ending with the saprophyte." — {See address 
 on " State Medicine," by Prof. J. L. Cabell, M. D., Sanita- 
 rian, August, 1878.) 
 
 From the chlorophyl to man, and from man to the sa- 
 prophyte, what an all-devouring world is this in which we 
 live, and move, and have our (temporal) being ! 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ALCOHOL— USE AND ABUSE.— ARDENT SPIRITS.— WINES. 
 —MALT-LIQ UORS. 
 
 "Doctors wiU differ." 
 
 We will not make it a question whether alcohol is a 
 remedy for disease, or for some kinds of disease, for it may 
 be assumed that all the world, medical and non-medical, 
 agrees that alcohol, in some form, is remedial in some dis- 
 eases, or in some conditions of disease. Like a potent agent, 
 and a kindred one, opium, it has its uses, and is liable, too, 
 to great abuse. 
 
 The best of medical lexicographers (Dunglison) says 
 alcohol is an " Arabic word formerly used for an impalpa- 
 ble powder, and signifying ' very subtile, much divided.' " 
 It is, then, a most expressive term. The same authority goes 
 on to say that " alcohol acts on the animal body as a pow- 
 erful stimulus : as such, it is used in the prevention and 
 cure of disease. Its habitual and inordinate use is the 
 cause of many serious affections of a chronic character, es- 
 pecially as visceral obstructions, dropsy, etc." 
 
 It is the intoxicating principle of all spirituous liquors ; 
 and there seems to be some property in it of intoxicating, 
 or at least of disturbing the mental equilibrium of all who 
 touch, taste, smell it, or write or talk about it. Subtile and 
 subtle it is in itself, or in those whom it inspires in attack 
 or defense. Although nameless in past ages, it is the spirit 
 oficine which has been the subject of eulogy or of condem- 
 nation from the time when it overcame a venerable patri- 
 
ALCOHOL. 155 
 
 arch, who, perhaps with some good reason, had grown tired 
 ot " cold water," down to the present day. 
 
 We will endeavor to treat the subject upon its own mer- 
 its or demerits. Alcohol is a stimulant in small doses, a 
 narcotic in large doses. Dr. Anstie, with great cleverness, 
 drew a line between the stimulation and depression, or nar- 
 cotism, which may arise from the use of any one of a large 
 number of agents classed by medical authorities under the 
 general term of narcotics, or agents capable of producing 
 narcosis or stupor. Alcohol is eminently capable of stimu- 
 lating slightly, of stimulating greatly, and of exceeding the 
 bounds of stimulation altogether. When a poor unfortu- 
 nate is so besotted with strong drink as to have no intelli- 
 gence nor volition, or when these are very greatly impaired, 
 he is said to have taken too much stimulus, but, in point of 
 fact, he is not then stimulated, but in the very reverse con- 
 dition. The stimulus of a glass of wine is a very different 
 thing from the stupor induced by a large potation of whiskey. 
 The latter has acted as a true poison ; and, when the man 
 is intoxicated, he is literally and truly poisoned. Between 
 " a little wine " and a heavy draught of whiskey or brandy, 
 or other ardent spirit, there is a " poison-line " that may not 
 be passed by any one with impunity. 
 
 Temperance advocates are pleased to speak of alcohol 
 always as a poison, but this is overstraining the facts of the 
 case. A nice definition of poison, subject to no objections, 
 is difficult, if not impossible ; but it may be said that some, 
 nay, many agents act as poisons or not according to quan- 
 tity, method of administration, and conditions under which 
 administered. Under no ordinary circumstances (excep- 
 tions allowed for) would the alcohol in a tumblerful of 
 . claret exert the deleterious influences characteristic of poi- 
 sons, while exactly under ordinary circumstances a tumbler- 
 ful of alcohol would be poisonous and probably fatal to the 
 consumer. Innumerable agents in common use may be 
 spoken of in the same way. Common salt (chloride of so- 
 
156 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 dium) is absolutely necessary as a condiment ; is it also a 
 poison ? In ordinary domestic use, certainly not, but in 
 large quantities it is sufficiently irritant to cause inflamma- 
 tion, or even death, if not rejected from the stomach. A 
 pound of it taken in a pint of ale caused death in an in- 
 stance recorded by Dr. Christison, with all the symptoms 
 of irritant poisoning. The stomach and intestines were 
 found excessively inflamed. 
 
 While a half -pint of alcohol would endanger the life of 
 a temperate man in good health, there are conditions of dis- 
 ease in which, more or less diluted, it may be the means of 
 saving life. The poison-line, as Dr. Anstie says, is liable 
 to be changed by many conditional circumstances, not only 
 with alcohol, but with other narcotic agents, as opium. 
 Every physician has to double, treble, or quadruple his 
 doses of opium in some cases, and he sees, instead of the 
 usual narcotism, only a reviving or stimulating effect upon 
 the nervous system of the sufferer. And so with alcohol. 
 It may happen that delirium and convulsions will follow 
 any great hfemorrhage. In such cases even delicate women, 
 entirely unaccustomed to its use, have been revived and 
 saved by the timely use of brandy or other spirit, which 
 gives power to the flagging heart, feeds the nervous cen- 
 tres, and arrests convulsions. 
 
 Under such circumstances brandy deserves the name of 
 eau-de-vie, which it has borne for ages — indeed, from the 
 twelfth century to the present time. Surely it ought not 
 to be classed in the same category with aqua To/ana. 
 
 Ardent spirits are then poisons, or not, according to the 
 use that is made of them. ' They may destroy the life of 
 one man, and save the life of another. 
 
 There can be no reasonable question as to their being 
 valuable therapeutic agents when properly applied. And 
 it is to be feared that they have been greatly misapplied, 
 or abused when intended to be remedial, of late years, in 
 medical practice. The same may be said, indeed, of opium, 
 
ALCOHOL 157 
 
 and of all potential remedies, for, as a rule, whatever is 
 potent for good is potent for evil also, if misused. 
 
 We do not propose, however, to discuss therapeutics. 
 The question here is, not what alcohol may do for people 
 under medical treatment, but what may be its influence 
 with those who are in good health. Alcohol is poison ; 
 alcohol is food. Many will deny one or other part of this 
 double proposition, but it is, or it may be, true. It is poison 
 in poisonous doses, which may be different with different 
 individuals. It is food, inasmuch as it is capable of diges- 
 tion, of assimilation, and of nourishing the living organism. 
 Dr. Richardson does not admit of any use for alcohol, in 
 any of its forms, as a necessity of life. The physician, 
 " beyond the sphere of its value as a drug which he may 
 at times prescribe, sees nothing but a void ; in whatever 
 way he turns his attention to determine the persistent 
 effects of alcohol, he sees nothing but disease and death : 
 mental disease, mental death : physical disease, physical 
 death." 
 
 It is little matter as to the manner of its combination. 
 " It is as alcohol in its pure form, as the ardent spirit of the 
 old writers, the ethylic alcohol of modern chemists, and the 
 basis of all our common intoxicating drinks, that it is best 
 studied. To say this man drinks only ale, that man only 
 drinks wine, while a third drinks spirits, is merely to say, 
 when the apology is unclothed, that all drink the same 
 danger." 
 
 This distinguished investigator says he has " found by 
 direct research that the proportion of thiity grains of alco- 
 hol to the pound weight of the animal body is the quantity 
 capable of producing intoxication, while an increase of this 
 amount to sixty grains is productive of immediate danger." 
 — ("Diseases of Modern Life.") 
 
 It would be well for any thoughtful man who doubts 
 
 whether or not he is in danger from the use of this subtile 
 
 agent to read the chapters bearing directly thereupon in 
 15 
 
158 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 the work just quoted. In this work disease is not con- 
 sidered, but under the title of " Phenomena of Disease from 
 Alcohol — The Functional Type," Dr. Richardson devotes 
 sections to the following subjects : 1. Alcoholic dyspepsia ; 
 2. Sensory disturbances from alcohol ; 3. Vascular changes 
 in the skin ; 4. Alcoholic thirst ; 5. Symptoms of systemic 
 failure. Under " Organic Disease from Alcohol " are found 
 the following significant sections : 1. Disease of the heart ; 
 2. Disease of the blood-vessels ; 3. Disease of lungs from 
 alcohol : alcoholic phthisis ; 4. Disease of the liver from 
 alcohol : diabetes ; 5. Disease of the kidney from alcohol : 
 calculus ; 6. Disease of the eye from alcohol : cataract ; 7. 
 Alcoholic insomnia or sleeplessness ; 8. l^Tervous diseases 
 from alcohol ; 9. Epilepsy from alcohol ; 10. Paralysis from 
 alcohol; 11. Mental alienations from alcohol : dypsomania, 
 mania a potu / 12. Delirium tremens ; 13. Hereditary 
 transmission of alcoholic disease. 
 
 The very terms are appalling. Alcohol is quite capable 
 of damaging each and every organ and tissue of the human 
 body ; and, furthermore, its victim transriaits mental and 
 physical disease, or strong tendencies thereto, to succeeding 
 generations. What offsets may there be to the fearful dan- 
 gers arising from its misuse ? Dr. Richardson speaks as 
 follows : " It will be said that alcohol cheers the' weary, 
 and that to take a little wine for the stomach's sake is one 
 of those lessons that come from the deep recesses of hu- 
 man nature. I am not so obstinate as to deny this argu- 
 ment. There are times in the life of man when the heart 
 is oppressed, when the resistance to its motion is excessive, 
 and when blood fliows languidly to the centres of life, ner- 
 vous and muscular. In these moments alcohol cheers. It 
 lets loose the heart from its oppression ; it lets flow a brisker 
 current of blood into the failing organs ; it aids nutritive 
 changes, and altogether is of temporary service to man. 
 So far alcohol may be good, and if its use could be limited 
 to this one action, this one purpose, it would be among the 
 
ALCOHOL. 159 
 
 most excellent of the gifts of science to mankind. Unhap- 
 pily, the border-line between this use and the abuse of it, 
 the temptation to extend beyond the use, the habit to apply 
 the use when it is not wanted, as readily as when it is 
 wanted, OTerbalance, in the multitude of men, the tempo- 
 rary value that attaches truly to alcohol as a physiological 
 agent. Hence alcohol becomes a dangerous instrument 
 even in the hands of the strong and the wise, a murderous 
 instrument in the hands of the foolish and weak. Used 
 too frequently, used too excessively, this agent, which in 
 moderation cheers the failing body, relaxes its vessels too 
 extremely, spoils vital organs, makes the course of the cir- 
 culation slow, imperfect, irregular ; suggests the call for 
 more stimulation, tempts to renewal of the evil, and ruins 
 the mechanism of the healthy animal before its time for 
 ruin, by natural decay, should be at all near." 
 
 These are the words of a very sagacious physician, as well 
 as of a medical philosopher, and they merit close attention. 
 
 Dr. Richardson is in fact a strong advocate of total ab- 
 stinence, as a thing in itself always safe and prudent while 
 any indulgence in wine or liquors is at best useless and 
 always dangerous. 
 
 We must say frankly that many eminent physicians are 
 less rigid in their views, though all agree as to the poten- 
 tialities in alcohol for evil. 
 
 Huf eland expresses himself as follows : " Nature herself 
 has provided for us that most excellent spirit, wine, which 
 excels all those prepared by the art of man. If there be 
 anything in the world which one may call the prima ma- 
 teria, that contains the spirit of the earth in an incorporated 
 form, it is certainly this noble production ; and yet we 
 find," he adds, with characteristic caution, " that too liberal 
 a use' of it. occasions a speedier consumption, brings on old 
 age, and evidently shortens the duration of life." 
 
 Dr. Fothergill sustains the idea that alcohol is food. 
 " It is a food," he says, " as well as a stimulant. In fact, it 
 
160 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 is one of the most easily assimilable forms of food, and 
 very frequently it can be taken and utilized when no other 
 form of food is available. While it is a stimulant, an 
 evoker of force, it also supplies, to some extent, that force 
 in its readily oxidizable self. The recent experiments of 
 Dr. Anstie and Dr. Duprd have placed beyond all question 
 or honest doubt the fact of the oxidation of alcohol within 
 the organism. If alcohol is oxidized in the body, then alco- 
 hol is a true food, or furnisher of force." 
 
 It should only be considered a food, however, for those 
 who are ill, or, for some reason, ill nourished. 
 
 Further on he says alcohol is very useful in convales- 
 cence ; a glass of wine and a biscuit may be taken between 
 meals, to be gradually abated, so that at length it is to be 
 limited to meal-times in the form of sound malt-liquor or 
 some generous wine. " But as a rule there should be no 
 other consumption of alcohol, except it be at bedtime, when 
 it may be taken for its direct hypnotic qualities." The 
 limited use here prescribed is really therapeutic. If the 
 convalescent exceeds careful directions, " it may turn out to 
 have been a most unfortunate thing for the patient that the 
 illness was survived." 
 
 Here is no language of prejudice. Alcohol is food — 
 alcohol is a reviving agent ; but its use must be under 
 watchful limitations. 
 
 Some years ago. Dr. Bouchardat held conferences with 
 the working-men of the Polytechnic Association of Paris, 
 on the abuse of alcoholic liquors, and his views substantiate 
 those of the most reliable of American and British physi- 
 cians. As the result of the most careful consideration, he 
 declares his conviction that the abuse of alcohol is now the 
 greatest obstacle to the advancement of the common in- 
 terests of humanity. It is destructive to ease of condition 
 and to good morals, and, as he says with profound truth, 
 JOaisance et les bonnes momrs sont les meilleurs auxiliaires 
 de rhygihne.''^ 
 
ALCOHOL. 161 
 
 "Do alcoholic liquors give strength, as is generally 
 believed ? " he asks. Apparently, not really. Alcohol ex- 
 cites the nervous system, whence results an apparent and 
 temporary exaltation ; but, if this is not utilized, there 
 is collapse, with a real diminution or depression of vital 
 force. 
 
 Good alcoholic liquors ofEer incontestable advantages for 
 convalescents exhausted by disease, or the workman worn 
 down with labor ; but we must add, he says, excess is 
 always injurious. 
 
 The reader, we hope, will bear with some extracts, trans- 
 lated from these well-considered conferences. 
 
 Wine is said to be milk for the aged — U lait du vieillard 
 — ^but let us have a clear understanding upon this matter. 
 In a -vigorous (verte) old age, alcohol should be used very 
 sparingly ; but in decrepit age, when solid food cannot be 
 well digested, wine becomes eminently appropriate and 
 useful. 
 
 Of fermented drinks, wine is the most important, the 
 most useful, and the least injurious in many respects, even 
 when taken in excess. 
 
 Wine is very composite, containing within itself not 
 only water and alcohol, but ethers, essential oils, sugars, 
 tannin, potash, soda, lime, magnesia, alum, iron, ammonia, 
 and various acids which are more or less free, or in excess 
 over the salines with which they are combined. 
 
 The proportion of alcohol in pure French wines varies 
 from five to fifteen per cent. 
 
 As a nutritive agent it must not be forgotten that, with 
 the absorption of the alcohol, acids and other matters are 
 taken up whiish modify the influence of the alcohol and its 
 action upon the nervous system. 
 
 The tannin and the coloring-matters have sometimes a 
 favorable influence upon the stomach : the bouquet, which 
 is so grateful to the senses of taste and smell, has hygienic , 
 uses, for it is well known that many sapid matters, even in 
 
163 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 very small quantities, exercise a favorable influence upon 
 nutrition. 
 
 Wine is absorbed less rapidly than ardent spirits, and 
 alcohol in equal quantities in red wine and in brandy dis- 
 turbs the nervous system to a less degree in the wine. 
 
 The various inorganic materials which enter into the com- 
 position of wine introduced into the human organism, when in 
 the condition to require them, may explain the restorative ac- 
 tion of wine with persons suffering for adequate alimentation. 
 
 Wine is not suitable for children ; it may be useful to 
 the adult working-man, and to the man advancing in age, 
 though only in small quantities. The working-man who 
 uses wine as an auxiliary to solid food should only take it 
 at his repast, with his family. Bouchardat gives an instance 
 of two war-vessels serving together, one French and the 
 other English, where supplies were scarce. The crews had 
 generally about the same food, but spirit was served to the 
 Englishmen and wine to the Frenchmen. The former had 
 scurvy, the latter escaped it. 
 
 Abuse of Wine. — This tends to the same evils as the 
 abuse of ardent spirits, though in a less degree. It is better 
 borne with a life of physical industry than with one of 
 mental labor. How much one may drink is a matter of 
 habit or idiosyncrasy, but any excess is injurious. The 
 wine of different vintages varies considerably in compo- 
 sition. An old farmer was in the habit of drinking nearly 
 four pints a day, in which there was five per cent, of alco- 
 hol, or more than three ounces. A new vintage yielded ten 
 per cent, of alcohol. Bouchardat cautioned him, if he val- 
 ued health or life, to reduce his potations to a single litre. 
 The old man affected to acquiesce, but said to a friend, as 
 the doctor went away, " II ne me fera jamais croire qu'un 
 litre de vin en vaut deux." He did not believe in analyses. 
 He kept to his two litres, with six or seven ounces of alco- 
 hol, but he never saw another vintage ; within six months, 
 " mon f ermier ^tait mort." 
 
ALCOHOL. 163 
 
 Madeira, sherry, and marsala wines, sold in France, con- 
 tain about twenty-five per cent, of alcohol. It is not proba- 
 ble that they contain less in America. 
 
 Wines are very commonly adulterated in France ; and 
 of course our fellow-citizens rarely drink pure French wine. 
 The Journal de M&decine is responsible for the following 
 verses : 
 
 " Au quartier des Lombards operant sa mixture, 
 Bacchus est devenu le dieu de la teinture ; 
 Son liquide a cess^ d'etre le jus divin, 
 Et, s'il rougit encore, c'est d'etre appeI6 vin." 
 
 JBeer. — Beer acts upon the nervous system by the amount 
 of alcohol which it contains, by the carbonic acid, and by 
 the active principle of hops. It has its uses. Thus, it may 
 promote digestion, and repair rapid loss of flesh. The mod- 
 erate use of it is generally safe. Its excessive use causes a 
 distention of the stomach, with attendant torpor of the vis- 
 cera, and impairment of their functions. It may and does 
 lead often to obesity, and sometimes to diabetes. It is of 
 course capable of producing intoxication, with all attendant 
 evils. 
 
 It is not necessary to repeat here the destructive influ- 
 ence of ardent spirits on every part of the living organism, 
 but we may say, with Bouchardat, that by common consent 
 physicians and philosophers consider the abuse of alcohol 
 as the greatest source of misery in the civilized world, and 
 thereby of decay and premature death. 
 
 By the diffusion of ease and comforts, hygiene makes 
 its greatest advances ; and it is certain that the abuse of 
 alcoholic liquors, by degrading men when it does not di- 
 rectly kill them, diminishes address, skill, strength, capacity 
 for work, intelligence, foresight, morality, sense of family 
 obligations, and therefore and thereby detracts from that 
 general ease and well-being which is the corner-stone upon 
 which progressive hygiene reposes. 
 
164 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PKOMOTE IT. 
 
 Adulterations. — The adulteration of liquors, wines, etc., 
 is a matter worthy of great attention. Some extracts from 
 a report of a committee of the Medico-Legal Society of 
 New York, on " Intoxicating Liquors," will not be deemed 
 now out of place. 
 
 Ardent spirits are adulterated in different ways : some 
 with mere harmless flavoring-matters, and others with an 
 excess of fusel-oil and other noxious materials, "which 
 poison the body and destroy the mind." 
 
 " But in regard to wines, beers, etc., not made in this 
 country, there seems to be no question that injurious adul- 
 terations exist to a large extent. Lager-beer, which has 
 become almost a national drink, and whose consumption 
 has happily beguiled many from indulging in stronger 
 beverages, and has therefore worked in the direction of 
 temperance, is now largely adulterated with mixtures that 
 are entailing upon their victims Bright's disease of the kid- 
 neys, destruction to the linings of the stomach, etc. Surely, 
 so long as persons wUl drink artificial beverages, be it tea, 
 coffee, lager-beer, or what not, it is the duty of the State 
 to recognize that fact, and institute safeguards to prevent 
 the admixture therewith of poisons or noxious ingredients 
 which form no part of the beverage in its purity," 
 
 The committee believe that " some modification should 
 be made in that (excise) law in respect to light wines — 
 wines containing but a small percentage of alcohol. As the 
 law now stands, persons who are accustomed, say, to claret 
 wine for dinner, if they should have occasion to dine at a 
 restaurant, not an inn or hotel, would be denied their favor- 
 ite beverage. The law, to be efficient, needs not to expel 
 these wines from such places." 
 
 The committee recommend the Legislature to pass an 
 act securing a standard of purity for all fermented and dis- 
 tilled liquors. 
 
 The report concludes in the following terms : " Wines 
 containing not exceeding fifteen per cent, of their volume of 
 
ALCOHOL. 165 
 
 alcohol to be deemed light wines ; and they should be 
 classed with ales, beers, cider, etc.," to be sold at inns " un- 
 der proper restrictions." — {Sanitarian, May, 1878.) 
 
 We will now introduce extracts or opinions from an ad- 
 mirable essay upon " The Use of Alcohol in Diet," by Prof. 
 Robert T. Edes, of Boston. 
 
 Alcohol is food : this is asserted, and sufficient proof is 
 adduced to sustain the assertion. But the " effect of alcohol 
 in any dose other than a very small one may be stated as a 
 gradually progressive blunting of the sensitiveness of the 
 nervous system. Beginning with the higher intellectual 
 manifestations, confusion of thought is among the earliest 
 symptoms which betray its influence. As this increases we 
 have a gradual removal of the restraints which reserve, 
 timidity, habits, education, conscience, or a sense of decency, 
 impose upon the lower nature, while the impulses and pas- 
 sions come to the surface. In vino Veritas. Finally, even 
 these disappear in a temporary imbecility and stupor." 
 
 Below this depth, paralysis, complete, or even death. 
 This is narcotism. 
 
 But what is stimulation ? " It may be doubted whether 
 such a condition as true stimulation by alcohol exists, for 
 the perfectly healthy man in a normal condition. The 
 early phenomena, if carefully observed, are better explained 
 as the beginning of intoxication. . , . 
 
 " Few men who might wish to have possession of the 
 full vigor and acuteness of their intellect — as, for instance, 
 a lawyer matched against a keen and watchful antagonist, 
 an accountant disentangling a complicated page of figures, 
 or a surgeon about to perform a critical operation — would 
 attempt to increase their legal acumen, sharpen their per- 
 ceptions, or give calmness to the judgment, with alcohol." 
 
 When a set of " good fellows " (bad fellows ?) get to- 
 gether over their cups and grow witty, an abstainer, as Dr. 
 Chambers says, finds their jokes dull and their anecdotes 
 pointless, and his principal amusement consists in his ob- 
 
166 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 servation of their curious bluntness to the absurdity of their 
 merriment. 
 
 The goodness of the jest in such cases is surely rather 
 " in the ear of him who hears it (muddled as his senses are) 
 than in the mouth of him who utters it." 
 
 Stimulation aids failing powers. " The relief of syncope 
 or fainting by a glass. of wine is the most marked example 
 of this action. A bringing up of the brain to its proper 
 working level by alcohol implies that it must previously 
 have fallen below it. It is restoration, rather than stimula- 
 tion, in the etymological sense." 
 
 A man is sometimes braced up for a transient effort by 
 alcohol, but " successive attempts to secure this result by 
 successive doses, and to ' keep up the strength with liquor,' 
 usually end in disastrous failure. . . . 
 
 " On the other hand, after the occasion for the exertion 
 is over, and before the force expended has been made good 
 by the digestion of food and by sufficient rest, the period 
 of fatigue and depression may well be bridged over by a 
 little alcohol. 
 
 " Under these circumstances, perhaps, as nearly as under 
 any in the healthy man, the true, stimulant action of alcohol 
 is exerted, and it is remarkable that we do not then have 
 the effects to which the word ' stimulant ' is conventionally 
 applied, that is, to the symptoms of approaching drunken- 
 ness." 
 
 Various military (medical) authorities, including Prof. 
 Parkes, facile princeps in such matters, are brought for- 
 ward to show that, while alcohol revives the exhausted man, 
 it takes from the force of one who has work before him. 
 Intelligent men asserted that taking grog while on the 
 march caused a short sense of revival, which was soon fol- 
 lowed by more than usual languor. 
 
 " Dr. Parkes also reports several experiments with care- 
 ful and intelligent men performing measured amounts of 
 work, as to the comparative value of beef -tea, coffee, and 
 
ALCOHOL^ I617 
 
 rum, in sustaining power during a march, the result in all 
 cases being against the rum." 
 
 Is alcohol to be relegated entirely to the laboratory of the 
 chemist, and to the shelves of the pharmacist ? Shall wine 
 and beer be used no more except as medicines ? " If the 
 intending user," says Dr. Edes, " is conscious that a little 
 wine means for him unlimited wine, there is no doubt that 
 for him abstinence is the only safe condition. . . . But if 
 its use does not mean excess, have we a right to relax a 
 little on suitable occasions under the iufluence of wine ? If 
 it promote cheerfulness and good-fellowship, does it not in- 
 directly tend rather to health than to disease ? Dr. Cham- 
 bers, after speaking of certain aromatic wines, says : 'All 
 of these five classes of wines, prudence will reserve for fes- 
 tive purposes and occasions ; the wise man who wishes to 
 enjoy life will make them always exceptional ; for, as idlers 
 have no holidays, so perpetual f casters ruin all the pleasures 
 of variety ; but I am quite sure that the not unfrequent 
 manufacture of occasions for domestic rejoicing — a birth- 
 day, a wedding anniversary, a harvest-home, a horse sold, 
 the planting of a tree, the calving of a cow, a daughter pre- 
 sented at court or cutting her first tooth, or any good stroke 
 of business — is a good promoter, not only of love and hap- 
 piness, but of personal health. Let the beverages which 
 celebrate these occasions be chosen for their peculiar and 
 exceptional flavors. If they are good of their class, the 
 moderate use will not shorten but both cheer and. lengthen 
 life.' " 
 
 Dr. Edes says, withal : "We can hardly help, as practical 
 philanthropists, rejoicing in the change which is said to be 
 taking place in the drinking-habits of our fellow-citizens ; 
 I mean the substitution of beer for strorfger liquors, and a 
 consequent partial abandonment of the pernicious American 
 habit of ' perpendicular drinking.' " 
 
 Beer and light wine are certainly less prejudicial than 
 such liquors as gin and whiskey. " The substitution is an 
 
168 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 improvement, and should be favored by all those who rec- 
 ognize the repeated failures of coercive legislation to alter 
 the habits of a community and make it virtuous against its 
 will."— (Pen>i Monthly, August, 1877.) 
 
 It has been justly said that few men who wish to make 
 vigorous intellectual efforts would attempt to fortify their 
 powers by alcohol. The public sometimes draw wrong 
 conclusions touching this matter. Very able men have 
 been known to make powerful speeches, for example, when 
 under the stimulus of alcohol. This is true. But the stim- 
 ulus does nothing more than give animation to the voice 
 or manner of the speaker ; the argument presented has gen- 
 erally been elaborated in a quiet study without aid or hin- 
 derance from so unreliable an ally. Hinderance would be 
 the presumption, aid exceedingly improbable. 
 
 We have it upon classic authority that the ancient Goths 
 of Germany had a wise custom of debating everything of 
 importance to their state twice ; that is, once drunk, and 
 once sober : drunk, that their counsels might not want vigor, 
 and sober, that they might not want discretion. — (Tacitus, 
 " De Germania.") 
 
 The public speaker who electrifies his audience undef 
 such Gothic inspiration may be assumed to have reversed 
 the order; that is, to have taken sober counsel with him- 
 self before a factitious and very uncertain vigor has suc- 
 ceeded to the tranquil hour of discretion. 
 
 "With apparent discrepancies the most observant phy- ■ 
 sicians preserve pretty nearly equal views about the use 
 and abuse of alcohol. Some, indeed, as Dr. Kichardson, 
 admit no use for it, except for medical purposes, and 
 many of our most intelligent men, practising medicine or 
 not, as Dr. Holland, of Scrihner's Magazine, who is a hy- 
 geist too, are of the same opinion. But it must be remem- 
 bered that, though alcohol is, when improperly used, a 
 poison, it is equally 2. food when properly used. 
 
 Its destructive powers are certainly fearful. It sends 
 
ALCOHOL. 169 
 
 not only drunkards to premature graves, but hecatombs of 
 worthy men who are undermined by it, unconsciously to 
 themselves, and without suspicion of its work on the part 
 of their friends. The writer has seen this fact demonstrated 
 plainly, to his mind at least, upon various mournful occa- 
 sions. It is a cumulative poison. The perpetual use of it, 
 in slight daily excess, does its work so insidiously that the 
 evil is not appreciated until it is beyond repair. Every 
 tissue becomes saturated in time, and blood, and nerves, and 
 viscera, are hopelessly poisoned. Richardson says as much, 
 but he may be ultra. Then Murchison tells us that, " of all 
 ingesta, the various alcoholic drinks are most apt to derange 
 the liver." And the importance of the liver to the whole 
 organism is not overrated, even in the popular opinion, as 
 to hepatic disorders or diseases. 
 
 That alcohol muddles the brain, the ingenuous reader 
 may probably admit from his own experience ; but he does 
 not know what organic changes may be induced by it in 
 that viscus. For the unlearned in organic chemistiy we 
 will cite a single passage from a late standard authority : 
 
 " All the principles of which brain-matter is composed 
 are, en masse (with the exception of the albuminous frame- 
 work), soluble in warm alcohol, although the individual 
 principles are not all soluble under these conditions. The 
 question occurs here, Can a man consume so much alcohol 
 in the form of stimulants, and retain enough in his blood, 
 in the unoxidized condition, to dissolve traces of matter from 
 his brain ? Actual experiments, made by Mr. Kingsett, ap- 
 pear to favor the hypothesis of a solvent action exerted by 
 alcohol on the brain of the living individual." — ("Annual 
 Cyclopaedia," 1876.) 
 
 We have said that alcohol is cumulative in its influence, 
 that is to say, that continuous draughts, even though in 
 very slight excess over the admissible, are ever growing in 
 destnictiveness. 
 
 The following passage, from Aitkin's " Practice," will 
 16 
 
X70 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 sustain this assertion : "The cumulative effects of long-con- 
 tinued intemperance have been clearly proved by Dr. Ogston's 
 observations; and the results of his post-mortem inspections, 
 on the whole, support the conclusions which have been ar- 
 rived at on theoretic grounds as to the injurious effects of 
 alcohol in excess. The following statements contain a sum- 
 mary of these results : 1. The nervous centres present the 
 greatest amount of morbid change, the morbid appearances 
 within the head extending over ninety-two per cent, of those 
 examined ; 2. The changes in respiratory organs succeed in 
 frequency those of the nervous centres, yielding a percent- 
 age of 63.24 of those examined ; 3. Morbid changes in the 
 liver are next in order of frequency, and are due to enlarge- 
 ment, granular degeneration, the nutmeg-like congestion, 
 and, lastly, the fatty state ; 4. Next to changes in the liver 
 come those in the heart and large arteries ; 5. Next are 
 those of the kidneys ; 6. Least frequent of all are the mor- 
 bid changes in the alimentary canal." 
 
 Any thoughtful man will find this category sufficiently 
 suggestive without further comment. 
 
 The elder Disraeli, in an essay on the " Drinking Cus- 
 toms in England," says : " We shall probably outlive that 
 custom of hard drinking which was so long one of our na- 
 tional vices." He instances the comparative temperance 
 of the Frenchman, the Italian, and the Spaniard. He says 
 the English acquired their habits of excess in the long wars 
 in the Netherlands, where by imitation "they learned to 
 drown themselves in immoderate drinking, and by drinking 
 others' health to impair their own." This has been the 
 bane of Americans too, especially in the convivial South. 
 Severe laws were passed under Queen Elizabeth and James 
 I., to suppress the newly-imported mania. " Tom Nash, a 
 town-wit of the reign of EUzabeth, long before Camden 
 wrote her history, in his ^Pierce Pennilesse,' had detected 
 the same origin. ' Superfluity in drink,' he says, ' is a sin 
 that ever since we have mixed ourselves with the Low 
 
ALCOHOL. 171 
 
 Countries is counted honorable ; but before we knew their 
 lingering wars was held in the highest degree of hatred 
 that might be. Then if we had seen a man wallowing in 
 the streets, or lain sleeping under the board, we should 
 have spet at him, and warned all our friends out of his 
 company.' " 
 
 It would seem that the cockney Mrs. Ramsbotham avait 
 raison, after all, when she refused to let Amelia extend 
 her tour through the Low Countries. 
 
 Hard drinking cannot be considered a national vice in 
 this country, but still there is a great deal too much of it. 
 Ardent spirits should be used remedially, not as a pleasant 
 beverage. We do not mean to assert that a glass of grog 
 is in itself a fatal poison. We do say, however, that it is 
 more apt to do harm than ^'ooc^to the consumer when taken, 
 not for just cause, but merely for sensual gratification. 
 We say also that, if a man takes it to strengthen him for 
 work about to be undertaken, the result will be exactly 
 the reverse. We say, furthermore, that if he takes it to 
 protect himself against cold, to which he is about to be ex- 
 posed, he will suffer not less but more from the cold, and 
 with more risk to health and life. If he takes it upon a 
 healthy stomach, to promote digestion, he will thereby im- 
 pair digestion. Briefly, we know of no use for ardent spirits 
 except remedial use, which ought to be resorted to with due 
 circumspection. Some persons use it as a corrective against 
 what Prof. Bartholow calls veiy properly ice-water dyspepsia, 
 but there is a safer method of getting rid of that form of 
 disease. 
 
 We have just said that alcohol does not aid digestion, 
 that is, normal digestion, in a healthy stomach, with appro- 
 priate food. 
 
 The reader may be interested in learning what is said 
 upon this matter by two eminent modern authorities who 
 express the scientific views of the day upon the subject : 
 
 " In the stomach, alcohol causes a sense of warmth, which 
 
172 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 diffuses over the abdomen, and is quickly followed by a 
 general glow of tbe body. In moderate quantity, it induces 
 a superficial congestion of the mucous membrane — a dila- 
 tation of the arterioles — and this increased blood-supply 
 enables the mucous follicles and the gastric glands to pro- 
 duce a more abundant secretion. The increased formation 
 of the stomach- juices is doubtless somewhat determined by 
 the stimulation of the mouths of the glands, in accordance 
 with a well-known physiological law. The excitation of 
 the gastric mucous membrane, when habitual, results in 
 important changes ; a gastric catarrh is established, for the 
 mucous follicles, under the influence of repeated stimula- 
 tion, pour forth a pathological secretion. The gastric glands 
 at first simply produce an increased amount of gastric juice, 
 but abnormal stimulation results in pathological changes in 
 this secretion. The increased blood-supply to the mucous 
 membrane sets up an irritation of the connective tissue, 
 which undergoes hyperplasia ; the proper secreting struct- 
 ure is encroached upon, and the glands undergo atrophic 
 changes which result in still more important modifications 
 of the gastric juice. Alcohol also affects directly the con- 
 stitution of the gastric juice by precipitating the pepsin 
 from its solution, and by arresting the activity of this fer- 
 ment. 
 
 "In small doses, not too frequently repeated, alcohol 
 increases the digestive power, by stimulating the flow of 
 blood, and soliciting a greater supply of the stomach-juices. 
 Large doses impair digestion directly by precipitating the 
 pepsin, an albuminoid ferment. "That a small quantity does 
 not produce the same results in a comparative degree, is sim- 
 ply due to the fact that it is too far diluted, by the quantity 
 of fluid present in the stomach, to act on the pepsin. 
 
 " The structural alterations induced by the habitual use 
 of alcohol, and the action of this agent on the pepsin, se- 
 riously impair the digestive power. Hence it is that those 
 who are habitual consumers of alcoholic fluids suffer from 
 
ALCOHOL. 173 
 
 disorders of digestion — gastric catarrh. The abnormal mu- 
 cus, which is elaborated in great quantity, acts the part of 
 a ferment, and the starchy, fatty, and saccharine elements 
 of the food undergo the acetic, lactic, and butyric fermen- 
 tation. Acidity, heart-burn, pyrosis, regurgitation of food, 
 and a peculiar retching in the morning, are produced." — 
 (" Materia Medica and Therapeutics," by Roberts Bartho- 
 low, M. D., etc.) 
 
 Such is the language of the therapeutist. And now let 
 us cite the physiologist : 
 
 " Alcohol diminishes the activity of nutrition. If its 
 use be long continued, the assimilative powers of the sys- 
 tem become so weakened that the proper quantity of food 
 cannot be appropriated, and alcohol is craved to supply a 
 self -engendered want. The organism may, in many in- 
 stances, be restored to its physiological condition by dis- 
 continuing the use of alcohol ; but it is generally some time 
 before the nutritive powers become active, and alcohol, 
 meanwhile, seems absolutely necessary to existence. 
 
 " Under ordinary circumstances, when the organism can 
 be adequately supplied with food, alcohol is undoubtedly 
 injurious. When the quantity of food is insufficient, alco- 
 hol may supply the want for a time, and temporarily restore 
 the powers of the body ; but the effects of its continued 
 use, conjoined with insufficient nourishment, show that it 
 cannot take the place of assimilable matter." And yet .... 
 "inasmuch as temporary insufficiency of food, great ex- 
 haustion of the nervous system, and various conditions in 
 which alcohol seems to be useful, must of necessity often 
 occur, it is hardly proper that this agent should be utterly 
 condemned ; but it is the article, par excellence, which is 
 liable to abuse, and the effects of which on the mind and 
 body, when taken constantly in excess, are most serious." — 
 (" A Text-Book on Human Physiology," by Austin Flint, 
 Jr., M. D., etc. ; D. Appleton & Co., 1877.) 
 
 Wines are less hurtful to health than the stronger al- 
 
174 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 coholic potations, though they are not among the neces- 
 saries of life. Yet when one remembers the marriage- 
 feast at Cana, he cannot well pass unconditional condemna- 
 tion on the use of wine. Use and abuse unfortunately have 
 traveled down the stream of time together through all ages, 
 and probably will so travel to the end ; but, nevertheless, 
 abusus non tollit usum. 
 
 Judging from the general habits of wine-producing coun- 
 tries, and those which do not produce it, the argument favors 
 the culture of the vine, and the use of its product. Men 
 cannot be bound down to restrict themselves to things 
 merely necessary for existence. There is no evidence 
 against the daily consumption of wine as unfavorable to 
 health or longevity. Cornaro never gave up the (measured) 
 use of it. Epicurus, who was a total-abstinence man of the 
 strictest order, died at the completion of his threescore and 
 ten, with the infirmities of age, whereas Cornaro was free 
 from them up to the time of his death, at fivescore. It is 
 not asserted that wine gave longevity to the one, or that 
 the want of it took longevity from the other ; the simple 
 assertion is made of the facts. The writer asserts nothing 
 more than that there is use of wine, which is not abuse. 
 He can readily believe that Circe's cup which transformed 
 the Tuscan mariners into groveling swine was the same 
 that has thus degraded the weak and unwary through all 
 succeeding ages. It came from Bacchus — 
 
 " Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape 
 Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine." 
 
 Milton expressed it properly — misused wine. When is wine 
 misused ? We should say, when taken between meals ; 
 when taken before mental or physical labor ; when taken in 
 such quantities as to disturb the intelligence. The quality 
 should be good, and preferably of native production. The 
 quantity must be so limited that the day's allowance shall 
 not intrude over two ounces (four tablespoonf uls) of alcohol 
 
ALCOHOL. 175 
 
 into the living organism. We do not commend the use of 
 so much wine to any healthy man. If he be sufficiently 
 well fed he will not need it, but he may take so much 
 without detriment. If he exceeds the limit, it is at his 
 own peril — at the peril of sapping his own vital founda- 
 tions ; if he take less or none, he will never have occasion 
 to regret his abstemiousness. Murchison says that malt- 
 liquors and wines are more apt to disagree with the liver 
 than the sariie amount of alcohol in gin or whiskey largely 
 diluted — though these are injurious also — but that of wines, 
 those least likely to derange the functions of the organs are 
 claret, hock, Moselle, and dry sherry. 
 
 Vinmn potens, vinum, nocens, always. As men will 
 drink something stronger or other than water, it will be 
 well when our country shall supply mild native wines con- 
 taining not more than ten per cent, of alcohol. The work- 
 ing-man could take as much of this as he usually does of 
 tea and coffee ; and, if only at meals, it would give them 
 additional relish without any harm to his moral or physical 
 condition. The history of civilization will, in the main, 
 sustain this statement. 
 
 When Disraeli hoped that his generation would outlive 
 the national vice of hard drinking in England, he surely 
 expected that the favorable change would come through 
 the use of milder potations ; and he immediately adduced 
 the habits of the people of the south of Europe, among 
 whom hard drinking is never a national or common vice. 
 A correspondent of the Baltimore Sun, now writing from 
 London, says that in no part of the world, civilized or un- 
 civilized, " will you see such systematic scenes of perverse 
 adherence to beastly intoxication;" but that "the vaga- 
 bond drunkard is looked at complacently in London. Why ? 
 Because the best revenue of the public treasury comes from 
 besotted and brutal drunkenness. Why not stop it ? Be- 
 cause the chief law-makers in the Parliament of this Chris- 
 tian land, because the wealthy influential voters in this 
 
176 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 Parliament, directly and indirectly, are interested in the sale 
 of intoxicating drinks, and vote in one solid body for every 
 measure that promotes the sale of this popular poison called 
 gin and beer, and vote in a solid body against every meas- 
 ure that impedes in the least its sale." 
 
 This being so, the reform desired and expected seems to 
 have no probability of early realization. We cannot agree 
 with the writer, however, in calling beer a poison, except 
 where there is criminal adulteration, from which the Gov- 
 ernment should protect the people. Beer in itself is not a 
 poison ; and only excess in quantity or vitiation in quality 
 renders it unsafe as a popular beverage. The Government 
 should see to the quality ; the rational man to the quantity 
 that he may consume without detriment to his physical or 
 moral well-being. He should not forget its capability of 
 inducing, by excessive use, not only obesity, but liver-dis- 
 ease {Murchison), with impairment of the functions of all 
 the viscera, and even the formidable and incurable disease 
 known as diabetes {Bouchardat). It is the abuse, however, 
 and not the temperate use, which is likely to produce these 
 maladies. 
 
CHAPTER Vm. 
 
 TOBACCO.— CHEWma AND S3I0KING.—WITE REPORT 
 OF NAVAL SURGEONS. 
 
 ExTKEMisTS who treat of tobacco generally begin by tell- 
 ing us that it contains nicotin, and that nicotin is a deadly 
 poison. They can prove this assertion from numerous sci- 
 entific authorities. The inference proposed is that the use 
 of tobacco ought to be entirely given up, at least by per- 
 sons not inclined deliberately to poison themselves. 
 
 The effect upon the public would be better if such ques- 
 tions were more fairly treated. Prussic acid is a deadly 
 poison. Wild-cherry bark contains this acid, and yet the 
 ordinary cold infusion, unless strangely misused, is quite 
 safe as well as advantageous in many instances for the con- 
 sumer. As the prussic acid is not in sufficient quantity to 
 prove deleterious, so nicotin in tobacco is in too limited 
 quantity to prove directly dangerous. The true state of 
 the case should be fairly presented. 
 
 Dr. Richardson gives a summary paragraph on the use 
 of " the weed : " 
 
 "Smoking tobacco, and the use of tobacco in every 
 form, is a habit better not acquired, and, when acquired, is 
 better abandoned. The young should specially avoid the 
 habit. It gives a doubtful pleasure for a certain penalty. 
 Less destructive than alcohol, it induces various nervous 
 changes, some of which pass into organic modifications of 
 function. So long as the practice of smoking is continued, 
 the smoker is temporarily out of health. When the odor 
 of tobacco hangs long on the breath and other secretions of 
 the smoker, that smoker is in danger. Excessive smoking 
 ^has proved directly fatal." 
 
178 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. ■ 
 
 We cannot agree with this able hygeist in saying that, 
 so long as the practice of smoking is continued, the smoker 
 is temporarily out of health. Otherwise we may frankly 
 concede what he has to say upon this important subject. 
 We believe that accumulated facts go to show that growing 
 boys are the worse mentally and physically for the use of 
 tobacco. It should be kept out of schools as far as possible. 
 But the assertion that all men are temporarily out of health 
 while smoking is certainly a mistake. For the word all 
 let some be substituted, and there will be no room for argu- 
 ment. We see, every day of our lives, men smoking moder- 
 ately after meals, who maintain as good a standard of health 
 as other men who do not use tobacco in any of its forms. 
 
 That tobacco is injurious to growing boys, especially to 
 schoolboys, is a subject not open to discussion. The medi- 
 cal oflBcers of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, in the sub- 
 joined report, but express the general sentiment of the 
 profession in regard to a matter of such great importance 
 in school hygiene : 
 
 EEPORT ON THE USE OF TOBACCO BY THE CADETS 
 AT THE UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY. 
 
 United States Naval Academy, Aknapolis, Maeylaud, I 
 
 December %, 1875. ( 
 
 Gentlemen : The regulations of the Naval Academy prohibit 
 the use of tobacco by the cadets, as a sanitary precaution, aud as 
 calculated to lessen their capacity for study. I am having much 
 difficulty in enforcing this regulation, and if it be unnecessary I 
 shall be glad to know it. 
 
 You are, therefore, appointed a board to carefully consider this 
 subject, and to give me your views thereon. 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 C. R. P. EODGERS, 
 
 Eear-Admiral, Superintendent. 
 Medical Inspector Albert L. Gihou, U. S. N. 
 Medical Inspector Albebt G. Gobsas, U. S. N. 
 Snrgeon Qbobqb A. Bright, U. S. N. 
 
TOBACCO. 179 
 
 Mebioax. Department, Untted States Naval Academy, ) 
 Ahnapolis, Mabylahd, December 8, ItiTo. f 
 
 Sir: The board, appointed by your order of the' 2d instant, to 
 consider the subject of tlie use of tobacco by the cadets at this 
 Academy, beg to report as follows : 
 
 The impropriety of this practice has been represented by the 
 various medical officers successively attached to this Academy. As 
 early as March 23, 1861, Dr. Palmer wrote to the superintendent 
 with respect to a case of " nausea and nervous derangement, ren- 
 dering him (an acting midshipman) unfit for study or recreation," 
 of which the cause was the confessed use of tobacco : " It is not my 
 design, though it might be my duty, to make this a report of infrac- 
 tion of discipline, but only to ofller an authentic example of a prac- 
 tice prevalent to an alarming extent in the Academy. If one of the 
 most mature and robust of our young men is obliged to confess him- 
 self unable to pursue his studies in consequence of the use of tobac- 
 co, liow much more actively must the same poison operate upon 
 many who are mere boys, adopting this deleterious habit from the 
 example of their seniors ! There is good reason to believe that a 
 large number of vague complaints for which midshipmen report to 
 the surgeon must be attributed solely to the use of tobacco. I know 
 of no other mode of accounting for the malaise, want of sleep, diz- 
 ziness, headache, nausea, etc., of which I receive frequent represen- 
 tations ; and, finally, it is my deliberate opinion that the unsatis- 
 factory recitations and consequent failures at final examination, so 
 injurious to the interests of this establishment, are to be attributed, 
 in great measure, to nervous derangement caused by the common 
 use of tobacco by the students. It becomes my duty to recommend 
 some stringent measures to correct this practice." 
 
 Experience since that time has been confirmatory of the opinion 
 here so ably set forth by Surgeon Palmer (since Surgeon-General 
 of the Navy). "Whatever arguments may be adduced in favor of 
 the rational and temperate use of tobacco by adults, no doubt exists 
 among medical men as to its injurious effects upon the growing or- 
 ganisms and mental powers of the young. Functional derange- 
 ments of the digestive, circulatory, and nervous systems manifest 
 themselves in the form of headache, confusion of intellect, loss of 
 memory, impaired power of attention, lassitude, indisposition to 
 muscular effort, nausea, want of appetite, dyspepsia, palpitation, 
 tremulousness, disturbed sleep, impaired vision, etc., any one of 
 which materially lessens the capacity for study and application and 
 
180 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 most of which are daily subjects of complaint to the medical officers 
 and form so large a proportion of the sick-lists, that the extent of 
 sarreptitious indulgence in smoking and chewing may be Inferred. 
 
 The recent experiment of permitting smoking at the Academy 
 has satisfactorily demonstrated the especial impropriety of the prac- 
 tice at an institution of this character. The further evil of moral 
 contamination from the necessarily unrestrained intercourse and 
 language of the smoking-room was superadded to physical and 
 mental impairment. This apartment became the chosen resort of 
 the leisure hour, its stifling atmosphere injuring health all the more 
 seriously from the intensified form in which the tobacco-fumes 
 were offered for absorption into the system, while out-door exercise 
 and recreation were proportionably neglected. 
 
 The board have confined themselves in this report to the con- 
 sideration of the effects of the use of tobacco upon the cadets at this 
 Academy. For this reason no mention has been made of certain 
 organic diseases attributed to the prolonged use of tobacco, or of 
 the serious nervous disorders which sometimes follow its excessive 
 use. In most cases the first and early attempts to smoke or chew 
 produce nausea, vomiting, tremors, and prostration. These symp- 
 toms lessen in severity as the practice is continued, and usually it is 
 only after protracted habit that perfect tolerance is secured. Should 
 tobacco be allowed, a large number of beginners would be subjected 
 to this experience, a condition of things which would militate against 
 the good effects of the sanitary regulations of this school, which 
 have, in all other respects, maintained so high a standard of health. 
 
 The board are of opinion, therefore, that the regulations against 
 the use of tobacco in any form cannot be too stringent ; and, fur- 
 ther, that, while smoking should be wholly interdicted, especial 
 care should be exercised to prevent the substitution of chewing, the 
 more deleterious practice. 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 Your obedient servants, 
 
 Albert L. Gihon, 
 
 Medical Inspector, U. S. N". 
 Albeet C. Goegas, 
 
 Medical Inspector, U. S. N. 
 Geoege a. Beight, 
 
 Surgeon, U. S. N. 
 Bear- Admiral 0. E. P. Eodoeeb, U. S. N., 
 
 Superintendent United States Naval Academy. 
 
TOBACCO. 181 
 
 The views as expressed in this report find but a partial 
 application with adults. We see with the moderate use of 
 tobacco as much of health and longevity and perhaps more 
 of comfort than we see without its use. 
 
 Hufeland has something to say which finds application 
 here. Agreeable stimulants to the senses, he says, " have a 
 double effect in the prolongation of life. In the first place, 
 by their immediate influence on the vital power, they en- 
 liven, strengthen, and exalt it ; and, secondly, by increasing 
 the activity of the whole machine, they put into much 
 greater activity the organs of digestion, circulation, and 
 secretion, which perform the most important functions of 
 restoration. A certain cultivation and refinement of our 
 sensibility is, therefore, healthful and necessary, because 
 it renders us more susceptible of these enjoyments ; only 
 it must not be carried too far, else it may become a dis- 
 ease. In stimulating the senses, great care must be taken 
 also not to exceed the proper measure ; for the same 
 enjoyment which, . when used in a moderate degree, is 
 capable of restoring, may, if used too much, consume and 
 exhaust. 
 
 "All agreeable stiniulants, which can affect us through 
 the sight, hearing, smell, taste, and feeling, may be included 
 under this head ; and therefore the pleasures of music, 
 painting, and the other imitative arts, poetry, etc., as they 
 can exalt and renew these enjoyments." 
 
 This is good philosophy, as well as good hygiene. A 
 
 man may derive more harm than good from smoking, 
 
 and his wife may likewise derive more harm than good 
 
 from the use of tea, but these luxuries, as all others, 
 
 must be used with discretion. With untold multitudes 
 
 of people, they iacrease comfort and contentment, and 
 
 they are properly and rightfully used when such are the 
 
 results. But when they appreciably disturb the health, 
 
 the digestive organs or the nervous system, which they 
 
 will do if misused or which they wiU do with some con- 
 17 
 
182 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 stitutions if used at all, then the harm certainly exceeds 
 the good. 
 
 The writer has seen men fearfully injured by excessive 
 smoking ; he has seen, he thinks, fatal results from it, in- 
 directly produced ; but, nevertheless, he would not say that 
 such results demand the total disuse of tobacco. Such, in- 
 deed, are very exceptional. Some irritation about the 
 fauces, inducing habitual cough, some indigestion, some 
 nervous tremors, some headache, are common results of im- 
 prudent smoking. This habit is capable, in some instances, 
 of affecting the eyesight very seriously, or even of destroy- 
 ing it. Prof. Chisolm recently made a report to the Balti- 
 more Academy of Medicine, " On the Poisonous Effects of 
 Tobacco on the Eyesight," in which he stated that in the 
 past few years he had treated thirty-five cases of amauro- 
 sis, directly traceable to the use of tobacco, by smoking, in 
 every case but one. When the sight fails with smokers, 
 and no appreciable change of structure can be found in the 
 eye, tobacco-poisoning may be assumed. If not cured, or- 
 ganic change will be found ultimately in atrophy of the 
 optic nerve. 
 
 The assumption is converted into certainty by the fact 
 that appropriate remedies fail entirely while the habit of 
 smoking is continued ; whereas, when it is abandoned, cures 
 may usually be effected rapidly. The tobacco amaurosis 
 mostly affects persons who smoke to excess ; but, in rare 
 instances, the susceptibility is so great that the smoking of 
 a single cigar a day will produce it. And yet it is but the 
 truth to say that many thousands of men smoke tobacco 
 with much enjoyment, without any appreciable evil results, 
 and even with that beneficial influence which so good an 
 authority as Hufeland positively commends. 
 
 Dr. Hammond (" Treatise on Hygiene ") says of tobacco: 
 " As a soother to the mind and promoter of reflection, to- 
 bacco is entitled to great consideration ; and I am decidedly 
 of the opinion that it is beneficial to those who like soldiers, 
 
TOBACCO. 183 
 
 have a great deal of mental and bodily fatigue to undergo. 
 It quiets the troubled mind, and disposes it to look with 
 calmness on the ills which may bear harshly upon it. But 
 these remarks apply only to the moderate use. When em- 
 ployed to excess, there is no doubt that it predisposes to 
 neuralgia, vertigo, indigestion, and other affections of the 
 nervous, circulatory, and digestive organs. Chewing should 
 be altogether discarded, on account of the great loss it 
 causes in saliva, and also because it is a filthy practice. 
 Smoking is the only way of using tobacco which should be 
 practised, and cigars, on account of their greater mildness, 
 are preferable to pipes. 
 
 " But one of the best effects of tobacco, when used as it 
 ought to be only after meals, is that which it produces over 
 the secretion of gastric juice. It is very certainly estab- 
 lished that any stimulant substance which increases the 
 amount of saliva increases likewise the quantity of gastric 
 juice. To prove this it is only necessary to make a gastric 
 fistula in a dog, and to place strongly sapid substances, 
 such as vinegar, aloes, or tobacco, in the mouth. Although 
 no gastric juice may be issuing from the fistula, no sooner 
 is the substance placed in the mouth, and the effect pro- 
 duced on the saliva, than the gastric juice begins to flow 
 until a very considerable quantity has escaped, or as long 
 as the action in the mouth continues. The beneficial in- 
 fluence of an after-dinner cigar is therefore important as 
 aiding materially in the digestion of the food." 
 
 As there is no proof whatever that moderate smoking 
 injures those who indulge in it, and as it is certain that 
 the custom, in due limits, tends greatly to promote com- 
 fort, and to give a sense of satisfaction and contentment, 
 the hygeist can only rightfully argue against excess, as he 
 must indeed in reference to all sensual indulgences. 
 
 The writer has this day under professional care a Cuban 
 gentleman, a teacher of languages, who desired a remedy 
 for a constant and long-continued bitter taste and morning 
 
184 HEALTH, AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 vomiting of bile. Upon the closest questioning, no cause 
 could be found for this disorder but one, to wit, the con- 
 tinuous smoking of cigarettes all day and every day. The 
 first injunction, as may be supposed, was restriction ; the 
 second, if no relief from restriction, a total abandonment of 
 the custom. 
 
 From what has been said, the intelligent reader may 
 gather what use may be made of tobacco without detriment 
 to health, if not to its positive promotion. The moderate 
 smoking of mild, well-cured tobacco, in the form of cigars, 
 after meals, one cigar, it may be, after each meal, will do 
 no harm to a healthy man unless from idiosyncrasy. Many 
 men are debarred entirely from the use of tobacco ; many 
 are injured by its use ; but stiU the rule holds that there is 
 no appreciable injury to the multitudes of men who use it 
 within the limits of discretion. When men abuse God's 
 gifts, whatever they may be, they abuse them at their own 
 peril. 
 
 L'Envoi. 
 
 The writer has a strong faith in the coincidence of good 
 health and good morals. He has endeavored in the pre- 
 ceding pages to keep their relations in view ; with how 
 much success must be left to the judgment of the reader. 
 
 He has expressed his own views freely, supporting them 
 more or less fully with high authorities ; and he has him- 
 self an abiding confidence in all herein proposed for the 
 advancement of the objects coming within the scope of this 
 work. 
 
 "With a single exception, there is nothing that is or 
 ought to be of so much interest to humanity as the subject 
 of human health. The writer desires to keep this interest 
 alive, and to diffuse it. He wishes it to be understood gen- 
 erally that the great science of medicine is not limited to 
 the administration of drugs, inasmuch as it embraces every- 
 thing tending to the physical well-being of the race. 
 
L'ENYOI. 185 
 
 An ancient author has said, " Whoever understands 
 medicine thoroughly is never sick " (Asclepiades). This is 
 an extravagant statement ; but the man who has an intelli- 
 gent acquaintance with hygiene will have a degree of im- 
 munity from sickness, if he acts according to his knowledge, 
 not granted to other men ; he will have, probahly, not only 
 an increase of longevity, but blessings which make age 
 not only tolerable but even agreeable to himself and to 
 those around him. He will have during his whole career in 
 life a degree of contentment which is almost incompatible 
 with bad health. When any ailment comes upon him, it 
 will be more remediable than with those who know not or 
 heed not the conservative laws of hygiene. 
 
 These are generally not hard to be understood. When 
 obscure in themselves or in their application, medical ad- 
 vice should be taken, the good physician being necessarily 
 a good hygeist also. 
 
 With combined prudence and intelligence on both sides, 
 on the part of patient and physician, the most favorable 
 results may always be expected ; for, as it is said — 
 
 " Nullum numen abest si sit 
 Prudentia." 
 
HEALTH, 
 
 HOW TO PROMOTE IT. 
 
 By RICHARD McSHERRY, M. D., 
 
 Professor of Principles and Practice of Medicine, University of Maryland; Member ot 
 American Medical Association; President of Paltimore Academy of Medicine. 
 
 Mxtract from Preface, 
 
 " Hygiene, public and private, has become, of late years, one of the 
 most important elements of modem civilization. It is a subject in which 
 all mankind has an interest, even if it be, as it too often is, an uncon- 
 scious interest. 
 
 " The present work is addressed to the general reader, no matter 
 what his pursuit, and the language is such as any physician may use in 
 conversation with an intelligent patient ; it is therefore as free as such a 
 work can be made from scientific technicalities. 
 
 " It is offered as a contribution to a great cause, and the writer trusts 
 that it will have some influence in promoting the health, happiness, and 
 welfare of all who may honor it with a careful perusal. The principles 
 advocated have been, to a great extent, put in practice in the persona) 
 experience of the writer in various parts of the world, and under many 
 vicissitudes, and he has found them to be not vague theories, but prac 
 tical truths of the greatest importance." 
 
 PABT I.—INTBODJJGTOBY BEMABKS. 
 Hygiene the Better Part of Medicine.— The Four DiviBions of Human Life : The 
 First Quarter, or the First Score of Tears. The Young Man ; the Young 
 Woman. The Man ; the Woman. The Declining or Old Man. 
 
 PABT II.—EYGmmCS IN SOME DETAIL. 
 Eaoe, Temperaments, and Idiosyncrasies.— Inheritance.— Habit.— Constitution. 
 — ^The Air we Breathe. — Sewers and Cesspools. — Ozone. — ^Malaria. — Animal 
 Bmanations. — Devitalized House- Air. — Water. — Olothiug. — Exercise or 
 Work.— Influence of Occupation upon Longevity.— Limit to Labor.- The 
 Food of Man. — Accessory Food. — Manner of Eatins.— Tea and Coffee.— Al- 
 cohol.— Use and Abuse. — ^Ardent Spirits. — Wines. — Malt-Licmors. — Tobacco. 
 —Chewing and Smoking should be forbidden In School. — Report of I^ava) 
 Surgeons. 
 
 One volume, 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.2S. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., PuBLisHEBS, 1, 3, & B Bond Street, New Yobk 
 
HEALTH PRIMERS: 
 
 A Series of Hand-books on Personal and FriYate Hygiene. 
 
 EDITED BT 
 
 J. LANGDON DOWN, M. D., F. E. C. P. ; HENET POWEE, M. B., F. E. C. S.; 
 J. MOETIMEE-GEANVILLE, M.D.; JOHN TWEEDY, F.E.C.8. 
 
 It is notorious that most of the cheap and popular books on health 
 are mere crude compilations of incompetent persons, and are often mis- 
 leading and injurious. Impressed by these considerations, several emi- 
 nent medical and scientific men of London have combined to prepare a 
 series of Health Primers of a character that shall be entitled to the 
 fullest confidence. Each primer will be written by a gentleman specially 
 competent to treat his subject. 
 
 These little books are produced by English authors, but, since the 
 essential conditions of avoiding disease and pres<!rving health are to a 
 great degree everywhere the same, they will prove of the utmost benefit 
 wherever their language is spoken. 
 
 NOW READY: 
 
 Exercise and Training. By C. H. Ealfe, 
 
 M.D. 
 Alcohol: Ita Use and Abuse. By W. S. 
 
 Greenfield, M. D. 
 Baths and Bathing. 
 The Skin and its Troubles. 
 
 The House and its Surroundings. 
 
 Premature Death : Its Promotion and 
 Prevention. 
 
 Personal Appearances in Health and Dis- 
 ease. By S. OouPLAND, M. D. 
 
 The Heart and its Function. 
 
 TO BE FOLLOWED BY: 
 
 The Nerves. 
 
 The Ear and Hearing. 
 
 The Head. 
 
 Clothing and Dress. 
 
 Water. 
 
 Fatigue and Pain. 
 
 The Throat and Yoice. 
 
 Temperature in Health and Disease. 
 Health of Travelers. 
 Health in Schools. 
 The Eye and Vision. 
 Breath Organs. 
 Foods and Feeding. 
 And other volumes. 
 
 In square 16mo volumes, cloth, price, 40 cents each. 
 
 For sale by all booksellers. Any volume mailed, post-paid, to any address in the 
 United States, on receipt of price. 
 
 J). APPLETON &' CO., Publishers, 
 
 1, 8, & 6 Bond Street, New Yobk. 
 
'A rich list of fruitful topics." 
 
 Boston Commonwealth. 
 
 HEALTH AND EDUCATION, 
 
 By the Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY, F. L, S., F. G. S., 
 
 CANON OF WESTMINSTER. 
 
 i2mo. Cloth Price, $1.75. 
 
 "It is most refreshing to meet an earnest soul, and such, preeminently, is Charles 
 Eingsley, and he has shown himself such in every thing he has written, from 'Alton 
 Locke ' and * Village Sermons/ a quarter of a century since, to the present volume, which 
 is no exception. Here are fifteen Essays and Lectures, excellent and interesting in 
 different degrees, but all exhibiting the author's peculiar characteristics of thought 
 and style, and some of them blending most valuable instruction with entertainment, 
 as few living writers can." — Hartford Post. 
 
 "That the title of this book is not expressive of its actual contents, is made mani- 
 fest by a mere glance at its pages ; it is, in fact, a collection of Essays arid Lectures, 
 written and delivered upon various occasions by its distinguished author; as such it 
 cannot be otherwise than readable, and no intelligent mind needs to be assured that 
 Charles Kingsley is fascinating, whether he treats of Gothic Architecture, Natural 
 History, or the Education ofWomen. The lecture on Thrift, which was intended for 
 the women of England, may be read with profit and pleasure by the women of 
 everywhere." — St. Louis Democrat. 
 
 " The book contains exactly what every one needs to know, and in a form which 
 every one can understand."— 5i)j/i7« youmal. 
 
 " This volume no doubt contains his best thoughts on all the most important topics 
 of the day." — Detroit Post. 
 
 "Nothing could be better or more entertaining for the family library." — Zion^s 
 Herald. 
 
 *' For the style alone, and for the vivid pictures frequently presented, this latest 
 production of Mr. Kingsley commends itself to readers. The topics treated are 
 mostly practical, but the manner is always the manner of a master in composition. 
 Whether discussing the abstract science or health, the subject of ventilation, the 
 education of the different classes that form English society, natural history, geology, 
 heroic aspiration, superstitious fears, or personal communication with Nature, we 
 find the same freshness of treatment, and the same eloquence and aiHuence of language 
 that distinguish the productions in other fields of this gifted author," — Bos^-on Gazette. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., PuhUshsrs, 
 
 1,3, & 5 Bond Street, Nem York. 
 
DISEASES OF MODERN LIFE. 
 
 By B. W. BICHARDSOJ^, M.D. 
 
 1 vol., 12mo, Cloth, 520 pages, - - $2.00. 
 
 From tfie Tribune. 
 
 " He has no affinity with the class of old-women doctors who are eternally fussing 
 and dosing, and with their infallible prescriptions break down more constitutions than 
 all the skill of the faculty can repair. His principal aim is to point out the causes which 
 lead to disease, and to prevent its occurrence by observing the physical laws which are 
 the conditions of health." 
 
 From Nature, 
 
 "The work is of great value as a practical guide to enable the reader to detect and 
 avoid various sources of disease, and it contains, in addition, several introductory chap- 
 ters on natural life and natural death, the phenomena of disease, disease antecedent to 
 birth, and on the effects of the seasons, of atmospheric temperature, of atmospheric 
 pressure, of moisture, winds, and atmospheric chemical changes, which are of great 
 general interest." 
 
 From, ike Charleston Courier. 
 
 "In this valuable and deeply-interesting work Dr. Richardson treats the nervous 
 system as the very principle of life ; and he shows how men do it violence, yet expect 
 immunity where the natural sentence is death." / 
 
 From the Toledo Chronicle,' 
 
 " His aim in the book under consideration is to teach the li^ ing generations to so 
 conduct themselves, and avoid and prevent disease, that death will not come prematurely, 
 as is almost generally the case at the present time. His work contains many useful and 
 valuable hints, suggestions, and directions, and they are put in such good and readable 
 shape that one does not tire in studying them." 
 
 From the Boston Commonwealth. 
 
 "Particular attention is given to diseases from worry and mental strain, from the 
 passions, from alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, foods, impure air, late hours, and broken 
 sleep, idleness, intermarriage, etc., thus touching upon causes which do not enter into 
 the consideration of sickness." 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 
 
 New York. 
 
Works op Henry Maudsley, M. D., 
 
 Fellow of the Koyal College of Physicians ; Professor of Medical Juris- 
 prudence in UnlYersity College, Loudon. 
 
 BODY AND MIND : 
 
 An Inquiry Into their Connection and Mutual Influence, specially in refer- 
 ence to Mental Disorders. 1 vol., 13mo. Cloth, $1.60. 
 
 PHYSIOLOaY AND PATHOLOGY OF MIND: 
 
 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE MIND. 
 
 New edition. 1vol., 13nio. Cloth, $°2.00. Contbkts : Chapter I. On the 
 Method of the Study of the Mind. — II. The Mind and the Nervous System. 
 —III. The Spinal Cord, or Tertiary Nervous Centres ; or. Nervous Centres 
 of Keflex Action. — IV. Secondary Nervous Centres ; or Sensory Ganglia ; 
 Sensorium Commune.— Y. Hemispherical Ganglia; Cortical Cells of the 
 Cerebral Hemispheres; Ideational Nervous Centres; Primary Nervous 
 Centres; Intellectorium Commune. — VI. The Emotions.— VII. Volition.— 
 VIII. Motor Nervous Centres, or Motorium Commune and Actuation or 
 Effection.— IX. Memory and Imagination. 
 
 PATHOLOGY OF THE MIND. 
 
 Being the Third Edition of the Second Part of the " Physiology and Pa- 
 thology of Mind," recast, enlarged, and rewritten. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth, 
 $3.00. Contents : Chapter I. Sleep and Dreaming.— II. Hypnotism, Som- 
 nambulism, and Allied States.— III. The Causation and Prevention of 
 Insanity: (A) Etiological.— IV, The same continued.— V. The Causation 
 and Prevention of Insanity: (B) Pathological.— VI. The Insanity of Early 
 Life.— VII. The Symptomatology of Insanity.— VIII. The same continued. 
 —IX. Clinical Groups of Mental Disease.— X. The Morbid Anatomy of 
 Mental Derangement.- XI. The Treatment of Mental Disorders. 
 
 f^ESPONSIBILITY IN MENTAL DISEASE. 
 
 (International Sdentiflc Series.) 1 vol., i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 ** Having lectured in a medical college on Mental Disease, this book has been 
 a feast to us. It handles a great subject in a masterly manner, and, in our judg- 
 ment, the positions taken by the author are correct and well sustained." — Pas 
 tor and People. 
 
 " The author is at home in his subject, and presents his views in an almost 
 Bingnlarly clear and satisfactory manner. . . . The volume is a valuable contri- 
 bution to one of the most difficult and at the same time one of the most impor- 
 tant subjects of investigation at the present day." — New York Obferver. 
 
 "Handles the important topic with masterly power, and its suggestions are 
 practical and of great value." — Frmidence Press. 
 
 For sale by all booksellers. Any volume mailed, post-paid, to any address in 
 the United States, on receipt of price. 
 
 S. APPLE TON & CO., Publishers, New York 
 
THE NEW YOKK MEDICAL JOURNAL. 
 
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