A Handbook of Health

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Riikka Talonpoika, Pilar Somoza Fernández, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)
Sometime Professor of Anatomy, University of Iowa; Professor of Comparative Pathology and Methods of Science Teaching, University of Buffalo; Lecturer, London Medical Graduates' College and University of London; and State Health Officer of Oregon. Author of Preventable Diseases, Conquest of Consumption, Instinct and Health, etc.
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY WOODS HUTCHINSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TENTH IMPRESSION

Looking upon the human body from the physical point of view as the most perfect, most ingeniously economical, and most beautiful of living machines, the author has attempted to write a little handbook of practical instruction for the running of it.
And seeing that, like other machines, it derives the whole of its energy from its fuel, the subject of foods—their properties, uses, and methods of preparation—has been gone into with unusual care. An adequate supply of clean-burning food-fuel for the human engine is so absolutely fundamental both for health and for efficiency—we are so literally what we have eaten—that to be well fed is in very fact two-thirds of the battle of life from a physiological point of view. The whole discussion is in accord with the aim, kept in view throughout the book, of making its suggestion and advice positive instead of negative, pointing out that, in the language of the old swordsman, attack is the best defense. If we actively do those things that make for health and efficiency, and which, for the most part, are attractive and agreeable to our natural instincts and unspoiled tastes,—such as exercising in the open air, eating three square meals a day of real food, getting nine or ten hours of undisturbed sleep, taking plenty of fresh air and cold water both inside and out,—this will of itself carry us safely past all the forbidden side paths without the need of so much as a glance at the Don't and Must not with which it has been the custom to border and fence in the path of right living.