Happiness and Healthiness.
Dr. Thomas Darlington, formerly health commissioner of New York City, after inspecting for the New York Civic Federation the camps of our militia on the Mexican border, found a remarkably low percentage of sickness, though the conditions were very trying. This fine health of the troops was due, Dr. Darlington said, very largely to their cheerfulness. They were a jolly, singing, laughing set of men, and they got their reward in sound sleep, good digestion, stout muscles, and steady nerves.
Few of us realize how closely akin are happiness and healthiness. Worry is worse than foolish, it is fatal. Gloom is a disease. Cheerfulness is victory.
If we want to win our battles of life, we must go forward with laughter and song.
Health Consciences.
Not healthy consciences, though they are well worth writing about, but consciences that are sound on the matter of health.
Nearly one-third of the deaths in the United States are from heart diseases, tuberculosis, and pneumonia. Pneumonia is largely due to overexposure, tuberculosis to unhygienic living, and heart diseases to overwork. Each of these terrible scourges could be greatly diminished, and two of them could be actually wiped out, by health consciences that made a duty of proper rest and sleep, proper food, proper clothing, and exercise.
Most persons come to understand this thoroughly well—but too late.
The Profit of Pedestrianism.
John Burroughs, the famous naturalist and author, had just passed his seventy-seventh birthday anniversary. When asked how he proposed to celebrate the event he replied: "Well, I think I will eat three square meals and walk five miles. It is because I have been doing that all my life that I am able to celebrate my seventy-seventh birthday."
The ability to eat three square meals a day is dependent upon the ability to digest what is eaten, and that ability comes from the outdoor life, led by Mr. Burroughs, so that his receipt for longevity condenses to one item—"walk five miles every day."
One reason why walking is an ideal exercise is because it takes one out into the fresh air. Moreover, it exposes one to all weathers, if the walking is a daily event, and so toughens the whole body and mind. It brings one into new scenes, and prevents monotony. It ministers to the love of nature, cultivates a sense of beauty, and leads one to study the wonderful world in which we live. It affords fine opportunities for the cultivation of friendship and good fellowship. Indeed, body, mind, and spirit are all improved together.
If you are not a walker, become one. Get some broad-toed shoes. Get some clothes that will stand a wetting and can safely rub up against briars. Get a good field-glass and a book on birds. Get a steel hammer and a book on minerals. Get a microscope and a botany. Get a camera and a supply of films. Get a companion like-minded with yourself.
And then get—out-of-doors!
The Auction.
Good health was put up at auction. “What am I offered," cried the auctioneer, "for this fine parcel of good health, warranted to last for threescore years and ten?"
"I offer all these pills and drugs," cried a woman with a hamper of bottles and boxes.
The auctioneer shook his head impatiently. "Who bids more?" he asked.
"I offer money," shouted a portly banker. "I bid a million dollars in gold," and he pointed to a bank van which he had brought with him.
The auctioneer shook his head still more vigorously. "Who bids more?" he cried.
"I offer imagination," timidly said a woman; "I offer the will to be well, and the fancy that I am well."
The auctioneer waved her aside with his hand. "Who bids more?" he cried again.
A quiet young fellow stood near, and said in a firm voice, "I bid intelligence and painstaking."
"Going—going—and gone to the last bidder!" the auctioneer shouted. "And may you, young man, make a good use of your good bargain."
The Four Headaches.
The Four Headaches were discussing their parents.
"My father," bragged Headache No.
"was Ambition, and my mother was Overwork, a masterful, energetic pair."
Headache No. 2 was prompt to reply, "My father was Indolence and my mother was Pampering—an elegant couple they were."
"My father," Headache No. 3 broke in, "was Intemperance and my mother was Gluttony, and a merry house was theirs—part of the time."
"My parents were serious—Worry and Fret; no frivolity in their home," said Headache No. 4.
"But you ought to have seen my Grandfather Self-will and my Grandmother Thoughtlessness," Headache No. 1 boasted, throwing out his chest.
"Why!" exclaimed the other Headaches in one voice, "those were our grandfather and grandmother!"
Thus the Headaches discovered that they were first cousins, and ever since they have worked in close co-operation and have loaned each other freely their hammers and punches and awls.
Saving Health.
A lecturer has brought out some startling facts in regard to infant mortality.
He ranked the sickness and death of infants next to heart disease in adding to the cost of living.
Every ten seconds a baby dies.
A baby born to-day has less chance to live a week than has a man ninety years old.
It has less chance to live a year than has a man of eighty.
From 80 to 90 per cent of infant sicknesses and deaths are preventable.
Forty-two per cent of deaths can be prevented.
Fifty per cent of sickness is unnecessary.
This means a money loss of $50,000,000 every year in Massachusetts, and an equal sum in every State of equal population.
This vast amount, if not wasted in sickness and death, would go far toward reducing the cost of living.
Thus spoke the lecturer, Dr. Thomas F. Harrington, director of hygiene in the Boston public schools. Everywhere the doctors and other men of science are urging these facts upon us.
The call is urgent for every person to put himself in as good physical condition as possible, to keep himself so, and to do all in his power toward elevating the health standards of his community.
Especial responsibility rests upon young people to become as strong as possible before marriage, and to learn how they may beget and bring to birth healthy children.
This is all a Christian duty, if there ever was one. Nothing in the Decalogue is more imperative.
Health is an important factor in individual goodness, and certainly it is an important factor in the advancement of the kingdom of heaven.
Some day the churches will start a great health campaign, and it will be as holy as any revival.
Our Wonderful Bodies.
The hand of the average bookkeeper travels ten thousand miles a year, and the brain guides it through all the complicated journey.
The hand of the typist travels a hundred thousand miles a year, and every yard of the journey is a bewildering dance.
The hand of the piano-player does marvelously more. A presto by Mendelssohn was played in four minutes and three seconds, a total of 5995 notes. That meant more than 24 notes a second, and each note meant a bending of a finger up and down, with many side movements of the hand, complicated movements of wrists, elbows, shoulders, and feet. A physiologist asserted that the performance involved at least 72 distinct nerve changes every second, each change produced by a distinct act of the will. For each of the 24 notes in each second there were at least four conscious sensations, or 96 transmissions of nerve force from brain to hands each second of the performance.
This is the kind of instrument that people abuse with alcohol and tobacco, late hours, bad air, gluttony, tight clothes, and a thousand other physical insults.
We hire men to care for our automobiles. We cherish our pianos and violins. We put our paintings behind glass and our books on steel shelves. We store away our clothes in cedar chests and put our bonds into safe-deposit vaults. But anywhere and anything is good enough for that exquisite instrument, that priceless possession, that crown of creation, our matchless bodies.
I sometimes wonder that God does not transform us all into putty.
A Chess-Player's Business.
The great chess-players, Lasker the world champion and Capablanca, were at one time confronted with the following proposed rule for their match games: that illness shall not interfere with the playing of any game, on the ground that "it is the business of the players so to train themselves that their bodies shall be in perfect condition; and it is their duty, which by this rule is enforced, to study their health and live accordingly."
A fine rule, worthy of the finest of all games! A fine rule also for the most engrossing and important of all games, the game of life!
Indeed, the rule is already enforced in the game of life. Whether the players like it or not, the game goes right on, in their sickness as in their health. It is not called off or postponed on account of a headache, or even pneumonia. Day after day, steadily, the players must face the board, move their pawns and knights and castles, check and avoid check, or be ignominiously defeated.
It is a player's business to keep in condition. It is a worker's business to keep in condition. That is the first business of a business man. Without it, his business will go to the dogs, where it belongs.
But we blunder along, our eyes sharp on the bank balance and shut to our balance in the bank of health, till one day a somber messenger informs us that our account is overdrawn. Then what a scurrying around, among pill-boxes and medicine-bottles, to get physical funds enough to restore our balance to the right side of the ledger. Perhaps we succeed, and then we go plodding on as before.
Health is our business. Night's sleep is as important as day's work. Digestion outweighs dollars. Exercise is no extravagance. Recreation is remunerative. The hundred dollars made at the expense of health, even the least fragment of health, pulls the foundation out from under possible thousands of dollars.
Health is our business. Shall we attend to our business, you and I?
Overdrafts.
The man with the overdraft habit is a nuisance at the bank; more than that, he often causes serious loss.
He may be careless. It is too much trouble for him to keep track of his checks and his bank balance; so he cheerfully takes it for granted that the latter will take care of the former. Often it does not.
Or, he may be calculating. "What if my account is overdrawn?" he says to himself as he makes out a new check. "The bank won't protest this check; they'll pay it. They won't want to run the risk of losing my account."
The bank does pay it, and loses the interest on the money while the "depositor" is taking his time about depositing.
If banks make money, it is in spite of such practices, and for every bank they constitute a severe problem.
This form of overdraft is bad enough; but even worse, in some respects, is an overdraft on the bank of health.
The cashier of that bank is very patient. He honors checks apparently without limit, and never says a word. Again and again he permits an overdraft, and seems not to care whether the customer ever pays up or not. This may go on for months, perhaps for years. Mr. Careless comes to look upon the bank of health as an inexhaustible mine, all his own.
Then, some fine day, the cashier protests a check. "No funds," he stamps viciously upon it. Mr. Careless comes around blustering. "It's an outrage!" he shouts. The cashier looks at him calmly. "I'll remove my account!" says Mr. Careless. "To where?" the cashier inquires mildly. “Can’t you let it pass this once more? It's very important," Mr. Careless pleads. "Nothin' doin'," answers the cashier. Mr. Careless becomes abusive, and the cashier summons a medical policeman, who puts Mr. Careless to bed. That is the history of millions of overdrafts on the bank of health every year.
Foolish? If there were a more insulting word, I'd use it.
“Keep Well “Clubs.
I have heard of a "Keep Well Club." The members of this novel organization believe in fasting, and have associated themselves together in order to obtain from one another the necessary stimulus and continued bolstering for this strenuous mode of living the hygienic life. They will fast for a week at a time or even, if they think they need it, for a month at a time. And when they are not fasting, the members of this Keep Well Club are very abstemious at their meals. One of them got along for eight months on a diet of eight quarts of milk a day and professes to have found in it physical regeneration.
I can approve of the purpose of this club without approving all its methods. I can believe in not overeating without believing that fasting is good for all persons or very prolonged fasting for any person. I can drink milk without making a calf of myself.
With this proviso, then, I hereby constitute myself a Keep Well Club. The constitution and by-laws of this club shall be very simple; I borrow them from Paul. They are as follows. "Keep well by keeping the body under, the soul on top."
In other words, I shall let reason and not greed rule my life. I shall be temperate in all things: in sleep, in exercise, in eating, in drinking, in work, in play. I shall not worry. I shall not trifle.
I shall make a business of keeping well, which is so much pleasanter and more sensible than getting well after one has heedlessly fallen sick.
I shall welcome all others to my club; but if no one wants to join it, I shall merrily flock alone.
Dyspepsia—in Your Mind.
Troubled with dyspepsia?
Of course you are. Wouldn't be an American if you weren't.
But, ten to one, it's all "in your mind."
You flare up at once. Don't I know dyspepsia? Don't I know that it is one of the most frightful pests of modern life? Don't I know that people are dying of it in yearly increasing numbers?
Yes, to be sure.
Then why do I say that it is "all in your mind?"
Because it probably is.
Because the stomach is a nervous organ, intimately bound up by those wonderful white telegraph lines with all the rest of the body, and especially with the central telegraph office, the brain.
Because there is no quicker way to prevent your food's digesting than to get mad. Except, perhaps, to worry about something.
Because continued bad temper or constant worrying will play havoc with your stomach just as surely as a bullet fired through you.
Because you cannot cure indigestion without getting a calm and sweet disposition.
And the moral of these facts for you and me is never to eat a mouthful when we are angry or depressed or afraid of the future.
Come to think of it, a better moral would be that we should not indulge in these deadly mental states in the first place.
Poor Fellow!
A Philadelphia paper tells about a man in that city who started to save money by walking to and from his place of business. His home is in the suburbs, and he figured out a neat little saving.
But, alas! he soon found himself lonely in this walk, and for company he smoked a cigar—a ten-cent cigar—on his way in. Then he found it equally necessary for his peace of mind to smoke a ten-cent cigar on the way out. That item alone cost double what his street-car fare would have been.
Besides, this additional smoking increased his fondness for the weed, so that soon he found himself smoking at home more than formerly. Set down another item at the expense of pedestrianism.
Then, he promptly discovered his shoes wearing out. Already he has had to buy two new pairs, and the year is only one-third gone. Total, six new pairs of shoes in a year. That of itself would make a balance on the wrong side of the ledger.
The result of this figuring is that our Philadelphian intends to go back to the street-cars, not from laziness but from economy. He has decided that he really cannot afford to walk.
Regarding which I, who am a lover of walking, wish to say a thing or two.
First. All smokers are bad enough, but the worst is the peripatetic smoker, who stretches the vile odor along five or six miles of otherwise sweet, pure air. All the physical good the walker may get through his feet he burns out in this case through his mouth.
Second. The walker that can't get sufficient amusement out of the thousand varying sights to be seen on any road, though traveled daily for decades, is too stupid to get enjoyment out of anything but tobacco.
Third. If you go into walking to save money, you'll be disappointed. You'll waste a lot of time. You'll wear out your shoes. You may get caught in a rain and wet your clothes.
To be sure, you may save a doctor's bill worth all these ten times over. And, to be sure, you may cheat the undertaker for ten additional years of life. You probably will; but what are these considerations compared with the cold-cash certainties of our Philadelphia friend?
"Can't afford to walk!"
No, you can't; not if you take the nickel view of life.
Healthy for Other People.
I believe that most healthy people are healthy by accident. And of the small number that are healthy because they take thought of the matter, most are healthy because of the personal pain and loss attending sickness. Being healthy for the sake of other folks is a uniformly forgotten duty.
And yet in few matters does your life more powerfully affect the lives around you than in this matter of health. A man in abounding health scatters everywhere he goes the contagion of strength and good cheer. By the very way in which he moves, by the brightness of his eye, and the clearness of his complexion, and the firmness of his flesh, and the vigor of his voice he energizes and stimulates all whom he meets. He is better than a doctor and a drug-store to all his friends. He is a reservoir of health, and anyone may draw upon it. Indeed, no one that sees him and hears him can help drawing upon it. Good health is one of the greatest blessings of its owner. It is also one of the greatest blessings to its owner's friends.
And further, all this being true, it is quite as true and important that poor health also is contagious. The irritation of it, the depression of it, the weakness and misery of it, can no more be confined to a single suffering body than smallpox or scarlet fever. A sick man becomes a public menace, and his disease is always "catching."
The chief reason why so little is made of this is that sick people are generally confined to their homes, often to their beds. They are not often public pests because they are not often public characters. But this is all the harder upon their homes and the dear ones there, whom, above all others, it is their duty to protect from pain and harm. Upon them falls the brunt of the trouble. They must bear with the fretfulness, their hearts must ache with anxiety, and many weary hours of watchfulness fall to their lot.
No man is sick to himself alone. No man is well to himself alone. To say, when you are chided for some imprudence, "If it makes me sick, I am the one that has to bear it," is the height of selfish absurdity. If a person whose neglect of the laws of health causes sickness were shut up by himself or herself, and if some means were contrived by which that person alone would bear the pain and loss and worry, you would see a revolution in some lives within twenty-four hours, and the doctors would have to find some other occupation for themselves,
Are You in the 3.14 Per Cent?
The Life Extension Institute, widely investigating business houses and factories, has found only 3.14 per cent of the workers physically sound. Sixty per cent had to be sent to physicians. Most of their ailments could be corrected, because taken in time, but if neglected would kill them.
A study of unemployment conducted by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and the Federal Bureau of Labor showed 1.2 per cent of a million persons out of work because of sickness. If that average holds with all the 40,000,000 workers of the country, it means an annual loss of about 140,000,000 days and of about $200,000,000.
It makes a big difference to you whether you are in the 3.14 per cent or not.
It makes a big difference to the nation whether this 3.54 per cent is increasing or diminishing.
If you are not in it, make it your first business to increase it by one individual.