II
The Editors were quite right in saying that the [article] under this heading in the [July issue] would arouse discussion. My wife and I, having discussed “M.D.” and many others with the title, feel constrained to put forth a warning against blind faith in anything which the faculty have to say on dietetics.
There are of course brilliant exceptions, such as Dr Rabagliati, Dr Knaggs, Dr Haig, the late Dr Keith and others, who give chapter and verse for every statement made; but when we consider the excellent work of laymen such as Albert Broadbent, Joseph Wallace, Horace Fletcher, Alice Braithwaite, Eustace Miles, Hereward Carrington, Edgar J. Saxon, Bernarr MacFadden, Arnold Eiloart, ordinary folks like ourselves may be excused if we venture to give our experience as against that of “qualified” men.
With your permission, then, we reply to “M.D.'s” five suggestions in the order he gives them:—
1. Food qualities are not of extreme importance.
2. Quantity tables may have been “settled” by physiologists to their own satisfaction many years ago; but very good reasons have since been given for altering, or even ignoring, them.
3. The particular number of grains of proteid to be consumed per day is not of serious moment.
4. That departure from the quantity specified has not led to disaster is proved by the fact that the human race still persists, in spite of the very varying eating customs found in different nations. The great majority being poor or ignorant, or both, know neither “tables” nor the need for them.
5. There can be no reply to such a general statement as: “The nature of this disaster may appear to be very various, and its real cause is thus frequently overlooked.”
In such matters an ounce of personal experience is worth a pound of cut-and-dried theory. We—my wife and I—have been reared in an atmosphere suspicious of doctors, both sets of grandparents having relied rather on herbs, water treatment, goodness of heart and faith in God; and their children have had too many evidences of medical ignorance to accept any dogmas. We are anti-vaccinators, nearly vegetarian, and, to come to the point, we have four children who will persist in thriving on a basis of always too little rather than too much of food. The respective ages are girl 13, boy 10, girl 6, boy 2.
All have been brought up on these lines: never pressed to eat, but continually asked to chew thoroughly. Foods “rich in proteid” put sparingly before them. Milk has been well watered; and eggs, bacon and other tempting and rich foods only on rare occasions given to them.
We would ask readers who can to make the following experiment: Let your children have a good drink to start the day, and then run and play; don't offer food till asked for. You will almost to a certainty find, if you start this plan immediately after weaning, that day by day and year after year it is twelve to one o'clock before they inquire for “something to eat.” We have done this for twelve years, with children of entirely different temperament and of both sexes. They go to school, poor things! breakfastless. During these twelve years light breakfast for father has been on the table—he goes without lunch—and not once in fifty do they ask to join him. Nor, if invited, will they after three or four years of age.
The have never had a fever which lasted more than a day or two, and they are all above average height and weight.
They get fruit in season just as asked for, and as much to drink as they like, but not at meal-times.
Our experience is over a period of twelve years, and we have come to the conclusion that the infectious diseases so prevalent and death-dealing amongst children of all classes, rich or poor, are, in the main, the result of over-feeding. We find it wise to keep highly nutritious foods (like eggs, cheese, meat, etc.) away from children—that is, for regular consumption; a little occasionally may do no harm.
You will have it borne in on our minds year by year, as your children grow up under such a plan, that Dr Rabagliati, Hereward Carrington and others are quite right. We do not get our strength, nor heat, from food. Let the force of animal life (zoo-dynamic, I believe Dr Rabagliati calls it) have free play, and your children can't help growing up well and strong.
In to-day's London Daily Chronicle I see a special article by Dr Saleeby, under this heading: World's Doctors versus Disease. 5000 Medical Men Meet To-day. The Triumphs of Three Decades. We know how much this wonderful faculty knew thirty years ago about, e.g., fresh air for consumptives. There is not a word said in this article (which is a sort of programme of the weighty matters for discussion) on the relation of food to the body. That question probably 4950 of them believe was settled by the eminent physiologists who compiled those “food-tables” years ago—and in so doing went far to pave the way for the modern frightful increase of cancer, Bright's disease, etc., as well as for “scientific” horrors like anti-toxin, tuberculin—not to mention compulsory eugenics!
J. Methuen.
HEALTH THROUGH READING.
Do many people consider reading from the point of view of health of mind and body—of refreshment in times of struggle—of recuperation after knock-down blows of sorrow, disappointment or misfortune?
Let us begin by saying that some of the greatest books are not to be read by everybody at all seasons. When one's heart or ankles are weak, one does not start to climb mountains, or one may end as a corpse or a cripple. So with one's soul under shock or stress. Personally, I can imagine nothing more cruel than the action of two women, one a story-teller of great repute among the “goody,” who, to a specially stricken and lonely young widow, tendered as “bed-side books,” Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and Browning's poignant The Ring and the Book. If they had wished to make her realise to the bitterest depths the awfulness of the world wherein she was left alone, and the blackest depravity of the human nature around her, they could not have done differently. Les Miserables she read till she reached the dreadful scene where a vicious cad hurls snowballs at the helpless Fantine. Then the strong instinct of self-preservation made her put the book aside—not to touch it again for nearly thirty years. With The Ring and the Book her mind was too wrung and too weary to wrestle—all it could receive was a picture of wronged innocence, and especially of the rampant forces of evil with which she was left to contend. With the same want of tact and judgment, if with unconscious cruelty, the gloomy, fateful Bride of Lammermoor was selected out of all Scott's novels for the reading of a very homesick youth, solitary in a strange country!
Yet we must always remember that, as in affairs of the body so of the spirit, “what is one man's meat may be another man's poison.” Some of the wisest and most successful nurses or doctors will occasionally permit an invalid to indulge in a longed-for diet which would certainly never be prescribed. They know that idiosyncrasy follows no exactly known rule. So we could tell of one who, amid the dry agnosticism of the later half of last century, had felt her faith, not indeed extinguished, but obscured and darkened. From the perusal of certain writers she had shrunk, perhaps with cowardice. They were put on such a pinnacle that she feared she would find no arguments fit to oppose to theirs. Weakly, she locked the skeleton cupboard. Then she was attacked by a malady which, while leaving her mind free and strong, she knew might be very speedily fatal. Straightway she said to her husband: “In two or three days I shall probably ‘know’—or cease from all knowing. There will not be long to wait. Therefore bring me three books,” which she named, works of authors of extreme agnostic views. Rather reluctantly he complied with her wish. She went steadily through the joyless pages, turned the last with the significant remark: “If this is all they can say, well!—” The skeleton cupboard, once opened, was speedily swept out. She quickly recovered, but never forgot her experience. Yet it must be remembered that this was the patient's own prescription, and was permitted by one who thoroughly understood her temperament. Therefore, though one would never wish to overrule a strong personal desire, that is quite different from offering counsel and furtherance—or proving experiments upon oneself.
A celebrated woman writer of the middle of last century was of opinion that young people of both sexes should not indulge in reading “minor poetry.” “Let them keep to the great poets, made of granite,” was her graphic phrase. A woman of singularly self-controlled nature has confessed that the only time in her whole life that she experienced an unwholesome moral and emotional disturbance, after reading a book, was when, at about twenty-two years of age, she read Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. She dared not finish it: and when, some time later, a copy was presented to her, she caused it to be exchanged for another book, not wishing it even to be in the house with her. Years afterwards, she read it again, quite unmoved. It may be added that her first reading was made in the course of a systematic study of English literature, which had already led her through the works of Chaucer and Fielding. She has herself asked: “Is it possible that the strong and unpleasant effect was produced because the book was the production of another young woman, perhaps of somewhat ‘sympathetic’ temperament?”
Taken as a whole, probably most fiction and all highly emotional work of any sort should be indulged in sparingly by those in the danger-zone of life, or by any under special mental or moral stress. History, philosophy (with sustained chains of reasoning) and biographies (best, autobiographies) of active and strenuous lives, should be resorted to by those temporarily doomed to spells of suspense and involuntary inaction. Invalids should be encouraged to read Plutarch's Lives rather than the Memorials of other sufferers, however saintly!
It may be broadly stated that, during the tragic episodes which seem to occur in all lives, the most wholesome reading is to be found in the books of the great World-Religions—the Bible, and the teachings of Buddha, Confucius and Mahomet. The Bible is of course a library in itself, and many of its books are suited to very widely different circumstances and temperaments. The Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistle of St James, and parts of those great poems known as the “prophetical books” and the more personal and less doctrinal portions of Paul's epistles are perhaps of widest application. From the words of Buddha, Confucius and Mahomet there are many admirable selections—and one remembers a wonderful compilation of more than thirty years ago, called The Sacred Anthology, and wonders if it be out of print. It does not follow that these works should not be studied at other times than “tragic episodes.” If this were more often the case, perhaps there would be fewer “tragic episodes”!
Next to these come such wonderful books of spiritual experience as À Kempis's Imitation of Christ, the Pilgrim's Progress, the Devout Life of Francis of Sales and others which will occur to the memory.
Allusion to the Pilgrim's Progress brings us to the remark that no books are more truly wholesome than some that can be enjoyed by those of all ages, and of very varied types of “culture”: in which the children can delight, and which refresh the aged and weary. Like Nature herself, they have hedgerows where the little ones can gather flowers, little witting of the farther horizons of earth and sky lifted up for the eyes of the elders. Let the children read the Pilgrim's Progress simply as “a story,” its eternal verities will sink into their souls to reappear when they too are in Vanity Fair or in bitter conflict with Apollyon.
For the same reason, the Book of Proverbs should be commended to youthful study. Under wise supervision—or rather, in mutual study—it becomes at once a series of vivid pictures of primitive Eastern life—for all allusions should be explained, where possible, pictorially—while at the same time the memory will be insensibly stored with shrewd common sense and knowledge of the world, to be turned to, and drawn upon, as needed.
And then, while the children revel in the fun and the fancy of Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, let the sorrowful or sore or wounded heart turn to them for solace, soothing or healing. Hans Andersen enjoys a very special “popularity” and yet some, who have learned to love and value him, doubt whether justice has yet been done to his work. Because it is matchless for the young, it may be easily forgotten that it can be so, only by some quality which makes it matchless for all others. Perhaps some of his most popular stories are not his most wonderful, but have simply caught the popular fancy, because of some artist's illustration, or some personal application to the writer's own history, as in the case of his Ugly Duckling. How many—or rather, how few!—can readily recall the pathos and wit of his Portuguese Duck or the deep philosophy of his Girl Who Trod on a Loaf?
It is told of Hans Andersen, a gentle soul in a homely exterior, which attracted the snubs and neglect which “patient merit of the unworthy takes,” on some such occasion was once heard to murmur: “And yet I am the greatest man now in the world!” It was very naive of him to say so, even in a whisper, probably wrung from him only in self-defence, but perhaps he might have thought it, in solemn silence—and—not been so very wrong! It may have been part of the very transparency of his inspired genius that he could not keep the secret to himself!
There is at least one reader who declares that she finds the seeds of all vital philosophy—ancient or modern—in his stories. How much he derived from those who went before him, it is not for us to say, but this disciple, herself a devoted student and admirer of the world's latest teacher, Leo Tolstoy, yet puts Hans Andersen above him, as having attained in practically all his work what Tolstoy attained only occasionally—i.e. Tolstoy's own ideal of what Art should be and do.
In such a paper as this little can be done beyond indicating on the broadest lines the kind of reading which tends to preserve or to restore mental health. Away with your “problem” novels and “realistic” poems stated in the filthy material of moral gutters! Hans Andersen will take some birds, some flowers, some toys, and will state the same problems, and get the same eternal solutions, without making the inquirer run any risk of meanwhile catching moral malaria. Isaiah will help us to build “castles” for the human race and for our own future, but he will take care that we shall remember that righteousness and unceasing vigilance and unflagging repair must go into the laying of foundations and the upholding of walls. David, even in his “cursing psalms,” will exemplify for you the power of hate and vengeance in your own heart, and as he holds it up before you, you will see how small a thing it is, how mean, how ludicrous!
As a man eats and drinks, so is his body: if he is a gross feeder, his body will be gross and sensual; if his food lacks nourishment, he will pine and fade. So it is with our minds and our morals. With whatever original “spiritual body” we may start, it needs spiritual sustenance, spiritual discipline, spiritual sufficiency and spiritual abstinence. Too often we ill-use it, as bodies are ill-used, goading its weakness with fiery excitement, or gorging its greed with sickly sentiment, or emasculating it by empty frivolity.
All who desire spiritual health must find out what books best promote it in themselves: and sometimes they are found, like wholesome herbs, in very lowly places. One good rule is never to recommend what we have not seen proved in ourselves, or on others.
Isabella Fyvie Mayo.
THE SWAN-SONG OF SEPTEMBER.
This fine sonnet is from Lyric Leaves, poems by S. Gertrude Ford. 2s. 6d. net (postage 2d.). (C.W. Daniel, Ltd., 3 Tudor Street, London, E.C.)
Sing out thy swan-song with full throat, September,
From a full heart, with golden notes and clear!
No rose will wreathe thee; yet the harebell's here,
And still thy crown of heath the hills remember.
Bright burns thy fire, e'en to its latest ember,
The sunset fire that lights thee to thy bier,
Flaming and failing not, albeit so near
Dun-robed October waits, and grey November.
And though, at sight of thee, a chill change passes
Through wood and wold, on leaves and flowers and grasses,
Thy beauty wanes not; thou hast ne'er grown old;
Death-crowned as Cleopatra, lovely lying
Even to the end; magnificently dying
In pomp of purple and in glare of gold.
S. Gertrude Ford.
THE QUEST FOR BEAUTY.
If you have travelled at all frequently on certain of the London “tube” railways you may occasionally have noticed, facing you in the carriage, a small framed poster which for beauty and imaginative power has, I should think, never been surpassed in advertising art. If the first sight of it did not make you catch your breath you will not, I am afraid, be interested in this article.
The poster represents a rich landscape, in which noble tree-forms show sombre against a tumultuous sky—the latter an architectural mass of pale cloud, spanned by a vivid rainbow. Across the lower part of the picture is a scroll, on which are written, in musical notation, two bars from Chopin's Twentieth Prelude. At the top are the words, Studies in Harmony: it is an advertisement of Somebody & Co.'s wall-papers.
In both colour and design this poster is very beautiful. It would be scarcely less so without the rainbow; but “the dazzling prism of the sky” not only intensifies the subtle harmony of colour throughout the picture: it turns the poster into a symbol. And the artist might well have stopped there; only, you see, he had an inspiration. When he wrote across the picture those eight descending chords from the immortal Largo he made of the poster—a poem.
I do not know anything about the artist who conceived this advertisement of wall-papers. I do not even know his name. But I believe him to be the herald of an invasion.
The invasion of life by beauty.
Do you think it a degradation of art that it should be enlisted by the makers of wall-papers? Are there not too many ugly and discordant posters? Do you consider trade and manufacture so sordid that they are beneath the ministrations of beauty? It doesn't matter a new penny whether you answer such questions with a nod or a no: the invasion has begun. It is irresistible. Beauty is stooping—stooping to conquer.
Your ardent social reformer is too often obsessed with one idea. Across his mental firmament he sees only one blazing word: Injustice. And, fine fellow though he often is, he is inclined to be impatient with any talk of art or beauty. “How can beauty grow in these vile cities?” he cries. “What is the use of your music, your statuary, your fine pictures, your poetry, to the starving and the oppressed?” And he does not see that his passionate desire for justice is at root the quest for beauty, for fullness and harmony of life. His stormy sky shows no rainbow: yet it is there. And so is the stately music, the transmutation of colour into sound. And if his eyes could be opened to one and his ears to the other, there would be more power to his elbow. For beauty is inspiration and courage—
“My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky....”
And there is more than that in it. The cultivation of a sense of beauty, of harmony, makes reformers less harsh in their judgments, broadens their sympathies and helps to save them from becoming mere doctrinaires. If you have any love for the beautiful you simply cannot be happy about most Utopias, though they be Justice itself in civic form; and, when our “scientific” Fabian has demonstrated to you how to organise the national life in all its parts into one vast smoothly working State mechanism you will shudder, and then laugh. And then, without any rudeness, you will say: “Hang mechanism and a minimum wage! Live men and women want living crafts, liberty and a maximum beauty!”
And really, I am coming to see that there are a great many health-culture enthusiasts (not to mention food reformers) who see no rainbow in the sky and hear no music in the wind; and even if they did, ten to one they would see no connection between the two. I verily believe there are some poor souls who have studied food questions so closely that they cannot see the sun for proteid nor the sea for salts. In all meekness, and knowing the frailty of the human mind (I have written dozens of articles on diet!), I would prescribe for them a course of artistic wall-paper advertisements, combined with the letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. He, poor fellow, had to battle against disease all his short life; but he managed to end one of his letters something like this (I quote from memory): “Sursum Corda! Heave ahead! Art and blue heaven! April and God's larks! A stately music.... Enter God.”
A somewhat ecstatic utterance. A trifle too exclamatory. Perhaps. You and I don't end our letters like that. (Or do you?) More likely we say something about the weather down here being miserably cold (or damp, or dull, or changeable, or hot) and brave out the lie with “yours truly.” But O for one little spark from the fire that shone in the soul of R.L.S. Better to die young with a broken heart, if it were a heart as brave and gay as his, than beat Methuselah by means of a mincing, calculating, cold-blooded attention to irritating self-made little rules.
Oh yes, I know well the value of little rules. And I know also that Nature offers us only two alternatives—obedience or death (either sudden or slow). But then Nature is something more than Mistress and Lawgiver. She is Beauty. And in that aspect, as in all other aspects, Nature is unescapable. We turn our backs on her only to find her awaiting us at the next turn in the road. Looking at the matter all round, I don't think we can come to any other conclusion than that Nature (or whatever you like to call It, Her or Him) is aiming at beauty all the time. So that we who are literally, if not figuratively, the children of Nature, had best do likewise.
Some mystic or other has said that man's search for God is God's search for man. If he was right—and I think he was—it follows that man's quest for beauty is Beauty invading life; and that the only healthy life worth the having is that which begins with “Lift up your hearts!” and issues in “a stately music. Enter God.”
Edgar J. Saxon.
SEMPER FIDELIS.
Do two things worth doing, every day.
Be scrupulously polite and kind, rather than witty or entertaining.
Cherish cleanliness, sobriety, frugality and contentment.
Cultivate sweetness of disposition and tranquillity of mind.
Think before speaking, and so reduce your causes of regret.
Seek peace and be peaceable for lis litem generat.
Begin at home, let home always find you faithfully on duty.
Care carefully for those whom Providence has entrusted to your care.
And the reward of the faithful will abundantly yours,
And your heaven will go with you wherever you go.
“A.R.”
MORE HOLIDAY APHORISMS.
Two's company, three's fun.
Levity is the bane of wit.
Braggers mustn't be losers.
Never put on to-day what you can't put on to-morrow.
It's an ill mind that finds no one any good.
It's no use crying over spilt milk: you're better without it.
Look before you sleep.
Never put an excursion ticket in the mouth.
Long hair never made true poets.
Obesity always carries weight.
Look after your manners and your friends will look after themselves.
Cranks of a feather fight together.
All is not toil that blisters.
To Sea Anglers:
A live catch is no better than a dead fish.
Better a place in the sun than a plaice on a hook.
Peter Piper.
HEALTHY HOMEMAKING.
XXI. Hired Help (continued).
What is the homemaker of limited means, who must have some help, to do under present conditions? Well, meantime, there is only the young “general” for her, either the “daily girl” or one who “lives in.” Of the two I prefer the “daily girl,” when she can be obtained. And the younger she can be obtained, other things equal, the better. She will have fewer bad habits to overcome. Some housewives object to the daily girl on the score that she may bring dirt or infection from her home, and also because she can seldom arrive early enough to help get breakfast. But a little management overnight can reduce the labour of breakfast getting to a minimum, and if the “outings” of the girl who lives in are as frequent as they ought to be the risk of her carrying infection, etc., will always apply.
The “daily girl” has definitely fixed hours of work and the same chance of enjoying a measure of home life, of keeping her friends and individual interests, as the typist or factory worker whose lot the domestic servant so often envies; while her employers are not faced with the alternatives of condemning a young fellow-creature to a solitary existence or forcing an unreal companionship which is equally irksome on both sides. It is true that the wages of the “daily girl” do not equal, in actual money, those of the factory worker, neither does she obtain the Saturday half-holiday or the whole of Sunday free. But to set against this she receives her entire board and, with a kindly mistress, is not tied down to staying her full time on days when she is “forward” with her work.
The life of the young “daily girl,” if her employer is a conscientious woman, need not be hard nor unpleasant; very little harder and no more unpleasant than the lot of the young “lady” who is paying from £60 to £80 per annum to learn cookery, laundry and housework at a school of domestic economy. Properly conducted, the relations between employer and employee, “mistress” and “servant,” are those of mutual aid. Such relations may be, and too often are, those of an inefficient little drudge for a “mistress” almost equally ignorant and inefficient. But when the employer is an intelligent woman with a sense of justice (I prefer a sense of justice to sentimental theories about sisterhood—people do not always treat their sisters justly) the weekly money payment and food will be but a small part of the girl's wage. In addition she will receive a training that will equip her for the “higher” branches of domestic service, or for homemaking on her own account. Not every girl has the sense to appreciate this when she gets it, nor the intelligence to profit by it; while it is certainly rather trying to the employer when the girl is “all agog” to “better herself” as soon as she has gained a bare smattering of how to do certain things properly. But all this is “the fortune of war.” Some girls never cease to be grateful to their first teachers and leave them reluctantly, while other girls never realise that they have anything to be grateful for. When gratitude and affection come they are pleasant to receive. But the motive power of the really conscientious woman is not the expectation of gratitude or affection.
A word to the unconventional homemaker. The young “general” is a bird of passage. Age and experience bring with them the necessity of earning more, and if her first employer cannot periodically raise the girl's wages the latter must in time seek better paid employment, probably with a mistress who is not unconventional. It is unkind, therefore, to refrain from teaching the girl how she will be expected to do things in the ordinary conventional house. I do not mean that the employer ought to slavishly run her home on conventional lines for the instruction of her “help.” But it is kinder, for instance, to help a girl regard a cap and apron with good-humoured indifference, or as on a par with a nurse's uniform, rather than as “a badge of servitude.” It is kinder, too, to show her that it is not only “servants” who are expected to address their employers as “Sir” and “Ma'am,” but that well-mannered young people in all conditions of life can be found who use this form of address to persons older than themselves. I do not suggest for one moment that any attempt should be made to delude a girl into the belief that she will not be expected, in conventional households, to behave with equal deference to persons younger than herself. Such deception would be unpardonable. But it is anything but kind to allow a young girl to drift into careless and familiar habits of speech bound to lead to dismissal for “impudence” in her next “place.” There is a type of person, for example, who seems to believe that, in order to show that he is “as good as anybody else,” it is necessary to be rude and familiar. But good manners are not necessarily associated with servility. And it is no kindness to help to unfit a girl for getting her living in the world as it is.
It may seem that, in this article, I am more concerned for the “hired help” than the homemaker for whom I am ostensibly writing. But the points I have touched on are just those about which I know many thoughtful women are puzzled. I cannot solve their individual problems for them, of course, I can only just barely indicate some of the thoughts that have come to me on a subject that is so intimately bound up with the whole of our present unsatisfactory social and economic conditions that it cannot be adequately discussed in a little tract upon domestic economy.
Florence Daniel.
The Care Of Cupboards.
There are three methods in general use of caring for cupboards. Some housewives prefer their cupboard shelves of bare wood, to be well scrubbed with soap and water at the periodical “turn-out.” Others cover all shelves with white American cloth, which only needs wiping over with a wet house-flannel; while still others prefer to dispense with the necessity for wetting the shelves and line them with white kitchen paper, or even clean newspaper, which is periodically renewed.
Of the three methods I prefer the last, with the addition of a good scrubbing at the spring clean. The weekly or fortnightly scrubbing is apt to result in permanently damp cupboards, unless they can be left empty to dry for a longer time than is usually convenient. The use of American cloth is perhaps the easiest, most labour-saving method, but the cloth soon gets superficially marked and worn long before its real usefulness is impaired, so that the cupboard shelves never look quite so neat as after scrubbing or relining with white paper.
The larder should be thoroughly “turned out” once a week. Once a fortnight is enough for the store-cupboard and for china cupboards in daily use. While cupboards in which superfluous china and other non-perishable goods are stored, and that are seldom opened, need not be touched oftener than once or twice a year.
In very small houses one cupboard often must house both china and groceries, thus combining the offices of storeroom and china cupboard. The larder, strictly speaking, is for the food consumed daily. But when larder and store-cupboard have to be combined, the groceries may be packed away on the upper shelves, which can be tidied once a fortnight; but the shelves doing duty for the larder proper should never be left for longer than a week.
Nothing betrays the careless housewife like an ill-smelling larder. All food should be examined daily and kept well covered. Hot food should be allowed to cool before storing in the larder. In the summer time special precautions must be taken against flies, all receptacles for food which are minus well-fitting lids being covered with wire-gauze covers or clean butter muslin. If the shelves are lined with paper, care should be taken at the weekly change to examine the wood for stains caused by spilt food that has penetrated through the paper. These should not be just left and covered over, but well washed off. With ordinary carefulness, however, they need not occur.
F.D.
BOOK REVIEWS.
The New Suggestion Treatment. By J. Stenson Hooker, M.D. Cloth 1s. net (postage 1½d.) C.W. Daniel, Ltd., 3 Tudor Street, E.C.
This book is a striking example of the new synthetic movement in the medical profession. It is an exposition for the general reader of certain basic principles of mental treatment and of the author's methods of applying these; it is also, in reality, an appeal to doctors generally to put aside prejudice and examine the immense potentialities of rational “suggestion” healing methods.
After examining the main features and disadvantages of mere hypnotic treatment and passing under review present-day “mental science,” the author explains wherein his method of mental treatment both avoids the dangers of hypnotism and reinforces ordinary self-suggestion. Throughout there is the frank recognition that few forms of dis-ease are curable by one means alone; on the other hand, it is contended that most disorders, both mental and physical, are remarkably amenable to a rightly directed course of the new suggestion treatment, supplemented by other natural means.
The narrowness of view that too often characterises the specialist is entirely absent from this book. It is throughout thoroughly broad, refreshingly sensible and profoundly convincing.
The Cottage Farm Month by Month (illustrated with original photographs). By F.E. Green. Cloth, 1s. net (postage 2d.). C.W. Daniel, Ltd., 3 Tudor Street, London, E.C.
Here is a book of immediate social interest, of great practical value, and of uncommon literary quality.
In the course of twelve chapters, bearing the titles of the months of the year, it reveals a welding together of two things which in many minds have unfortunately become divorced: the practical problems and arduous labour which no tiller of the soil can escape and—the keen delight of a poetical temperament in the ever-changing, yet annually renewed, beauties of earth and sky and running water.
It escapes the dry technicalities of the agricultural text-book, while at the same time conveying innumerable valuable hints on practically every branch of “small farming”—advice which springs from the author's thorough knowledge based on long and often hard experience.
On the other hand, while entirely free from that all too common defect of “nature-books”—hot-house enthusiasm—it will delight the most incurable townsman (providing his sense of beauty is not withered) by its joyous yet restrained pictures of open-air things.
Simple Rules of Health. By Philip Oyler, M.A. (2nd ed.). 3d. net. Post free from the author, Morshin School, Headley, Hants.
An admirable epitome of what might be called “advanced health culture without crankiness.” The author is an ardent advocate of simplicity in all things and—practises what he preaches. Moreover, he is one of those who sees health from all points of view: he is as much concerned with what the English Bible calls “a right spirit” as with a fit body and a responsive mind. It is a little book deserving of a wide circulation.
CORRESPONDENCE.
A REMEDY FOR SLEEPLESSNESS.
To the Editors
Sirs,
Would you care to publish the following experience of a cure for sleeplessness:—
I had no difficulty in going to sleep, but usually awoke again at about two a.m. with palpitation, and it often took me two or three hours to go to sleep again.
I cured myself in the following way: I left off supper and reduced my tea meal by half, and the result was continuous sleep; the symptoms, however, began to come back again after a time, so I gradually cut the tea meal right away, and half of the midday meal as well. The cure was then permanent and after a time I found that I could resume the tea meal again. At the present time I am having a tea meal of fruit only.
In addition I should advise those who suffer from this complaint to keep cheerful, and to avoid excessive physical or mental fatigue and worry. Yours faithfully,
“A Six Months' Reader.”
IS PURE LIME JUICE OBTAINABLE?
The Editors have received the following letter from Messrs Rowntree & Co., Ltd.:—
“We note in your issue of [July 1913] under the heading of ‘Lemon or Orange Squash’ a note to the effect that bottled lemon squashes and lime cordials ‘are not pure in the strict sense of the term, since they are bound to contain 10 per cent. alcoholic pure spirit by Government regulations.’ We should be glad to know what is your authority for this statement. Possibly it is a misprint, because obviously the Government does not require anything of the kind. Our own lemon squash and lime juice cordial are entirely free from any form of preservative, including alcohol. They are made up from pure lemon juice and lime juice respectively, with sugar, and contain no foreign ingredient.”
The statement complained of was based on an article entitled “Fortified Lime Juice” which appeared in The Chemist and Druggist, 13th May 1911 (page 51). On again referring to this article we find that the Government regulation applies only to exported Lime Juice.
We regret having made this error, and are genuinely glad to have Messrs Rowntree's assurance that their own “Lime Juice Cordial” and “Lemon Squash” are “entirely free from any form of preservative, including alcohol.”
Nevertheless, we think our suspicions regarding the presence of preservatives in such articles are justifiable in view of the following authoritative statements made by The Chemist and Druggist in the article referred to:—
“The British Revenue authorities have drawn the line a little tighter in the discharge of their responsibility respecting the soundness of lime-juice intended for exportation or for use on board ship. The new rule henceforth is to grant a ‘pass’ certificate for unfortified lime-juice to last for fourteen days only, at the end of which time another certificate must be obtained. As this new regulation affects lime-juice in its natural condition before rum or any other spirit is added to it, only lime-juice manufacturers or importers are concerned in the matter.... With such rapidly deteriorating liquid as lime or lemon juice the addition of the preservative spirit is a necessity, hence the sooner it is fortified the better. The Revenue authorities permit duty-free spirit to be used for this purpose, but in order that lime-juice manufacturers shall have this advantage of not paying duty on the spirit used the Revenue authorities insist on approval of the juice and its subsequent fortification in bond under supervision of the Crown.... In reference to the proportion of spirit used, previously the regulation was expressed in a permissive sense, but now the emphatic “must” is used. In the last Government Laboratory report it was stated that 396 samples were examined, most of which were lime-juice, representing nearly 50,000 gallons. Even the fortified article is re-tested if more than three months old in cask or two years old in bottle, and this re-testing resulted last year in a condemnation of several hundred gallons owing to deterioration during storage. This juice is principally for use in the Mercantile Marine to combat scurvy.”
From which it would appear that the use of some kind of preservative is essential with such a rapidly deteriorating liquid as lime or lemon juice; and if not alcohol, there are innumerable chemical preservatives available. We wish we could rely on receiving assurances from other “Lime Juice” importers and manufacturers similar to that we have received from Messrs Rowntree.
To People with Strong Convictions:
A holiday is the best of all opportunities for appreciating the opposite point of view to our own: this is why everyone needs a day's holiday once a week.
HEALTH QUERIES.
Under this heading our contributor, Dr Valentine Knaggs, deals briefly month by month, and according as space permits, with questions of general interest to health seekers and others.
In all Queries relating to health difficulties it is essential that full details of the correspondent's customary diet should be clearly given.
Correspondents are earnestly requested to write on one side only of the paper, giving full name and address, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. When an answer is required by post a stamped addressed envelope must be enclosed.—[Eds.]
FAULTY FOOD COMBINATIONS.
H.E.H. writes.—I should like your opinion of the statement of the late Mr A. Broadbent, that fruit when taken with starchy food by dyspeptics delays digestion, and that the digestion of starchy foods and vegetables occupied only one-third of the time needed for the digestion of starch with fruit. I have lived on a strict vegetarian diet and observed the laws of hygiene for two and a half years, to rid myself of dyspepsia, with great success, having increased my weight by thirty-six pounds; for the last nine months of this time I have lived on a largely “unfired” diet, but am still troubled with acid risings and flatulence and cannot account for it. Will you kindly enlighten me on the subject?
I am a carpenter by trade and get eight hours in the open air every day. I take a tumbler of distilled water hot with the juice of one orange at 6 a.m., breakfast at 7.30 a.m., dinner at 12 noon and tea at 6 p.m., all consisting of Wallace unfermented bread and biscuits, various fruits (mostly apples, bananas and tomatoes) and nuts, about ½oz. at a meal; also a little cheese, about 1 oz. at a meal.
The late Mr A. Broadbent was quite right, in my opinion, when he asserted that fruit taken with starchy foods delayed digestion.
To reap the true benefit from fruit it must be taken alone.
The dominant element in fruit is oxygen and the feature of oxygen is its power to start the process of oxidation in decomposing and disintegrating substances. It follows that when the stomach is filled with fermenting food-stuffs, or the tissues are clogged with the products derived from such, the oxidising action of fruit will be correspondingly intense.
The Naturist who applies the Schroth Cure for the purpose of curing chronic diseases uses fruit as his chief eliminating agent. The reader will remember that the peasant healer, Schroth, made his patients take dry stale rolls alone for three whole days, with nothing whatever to drink, and on the fourth day, he gave them a full bottle of white wine, which then caused intense oxidation, with marked elimination of poisons. His methods, if successful, were drastic and weakening, and so the latter-day exponents of Schrothism have modified this and give their patients zweiback or twice-baked bread instead of rolls, and on the third or fourth day make the patient partake freely of fresh fruit. This process of alternate dry days and fluid days is continued for some weeks until the cure is complete.
I have merely referred to this matter to show the part played by fruit in the body. To a healthy person fruit is in truth a splendid regenerating food, but it should, whenever possible, be eaten alone. To a dyspeptic, fruit is often equally good, if taken by itself.
The case of vegetables is different, and I hold with Broadbent that salad or properly cooked vegetables do go well with cereals, because they contain, not oxygen and oxygen acids, but mineral elements like soda, lime and magnesia, which neutralise the acids and toxins which form in the body as a result of its work. The vegetable is just as active as the fruit as an eliminant, but it works on different lines. Cereal foods, if eaten slowly in a dry condition are made alkaline by the saliva, so that the vegetables, which are also naturally alkaline, would harmonise well with cereals if eaten with them.
Our correspondent should modify his diet as follows, and then, I anticipate, he will cease to be troubled with his acid dyspepsia and flatulence. He should take his fruit alone, and take any of the crisp unsweetened Wallace “P.R.” Biscuits in preference to the unfermented bread, which latter is often difficult to digest:—
On rising.—A tumblerful of hot distilled water.
Breakfast (at 7.30).—Fresh fruit only.
Lunch (at 12).—1 to 2 oz. of cheese, preferably home-made curd cheese; salad of green leaf vegetables; “P.R.” or Ixion biscuits with fresh butter, or nut butter.
Dinner (at 6).—1 to 2 oz. of flaked pine kernels, finely grated raw roots or tomatoes, with pure olive oil; Granose biscuits, or Shredded Wheat biscuits, and fresh butter.
At bedtime.—Cupful of dandelion coffee or hot distilled water.
NEURITIS.
E.M.A. writes.—At the age of five years I had an attack of rheumatic fever through taking a severe cold, and have been troubled more or less with pains since that time, which I feel sure are caused through rheumatism of the nerves. I am now fifty-eight years of age and have been a vegetarian for six years.
My diet is:—8 a.m., cup of Sanum Tonic Tea; 9 a.m., Cup of dried milk; 10 a.m., half of an apple and a little crust of wholemeal bread; 1 p.m. conservatively cooked vegetable, using “Emprote” for sauce; 4 p.m., cup of dried milk; 6 p.m., a little green salad with St Ivel lactic cheese (size of one large walnut); 9 p.m., cup of dried milk. Do you think dried milk is harmful to me? I should miss it very much were I to leave it off. I must mention how great a help The Healthy Life magazine is to me in many ways.
Neuritis is a painful and wearying form of nerve trouble which mostly affects the arms and legs. It can, however, originate in any other part of the body through the spinal nerve centres. It may sometimes be due to injury, but the usual cause is some form of thickening or misplacement of the spinal structures, which induces pressure upon the nerves as they emerge through the apertures between the spinal bones. A careful examination of the back will show the site, and often the nature, of the thickening or encumbrance which is present.
In our correspondent's case the thickening process doubtless occurred as an after effect of the attack of rheumatic fever.
The best remedy is suitable osteopathic treatment for the spine, supplemented by either very hot or quite cold spinal sitz baths, by acetic acid skin treatment, or by any other means which will have the effect of disencumbering the spine. By means of our treatment we free the painful nerves from harmful pressure and promote an increased blood circulation in the parts affected. In this way the cause of the disorder is removed.
A diet along the following lines would be better than the present one:—
8 a.m.—Tumblerful of hot distilled water.
9.30.—One raw egg beaten up with cream and vegetable juice or clear vegetable soup made without salt. Wholemeal bread with plenty of butter and some celery or watercress.
1.30 p.m.—Two conservatively cooked vegetables done without salt, with grated cheese as sauce and a Granose biscuit with butter.
4.—Tumblerful of hot distilled water only.
6.30.—2 oz. of cottage cheese or cream cheese, salad and Granose biscuits, or “P.R.” crackers, with butter.
9.30.—A raw egg beaten up with cream and vegetable juice or soup.
I think dried milk preparations are inadvisable in such cases as these (especially when taken as beverages, as the “milk sugars” present are very prone to ferment and to hinder the cleansing of the digestive tract), and that the required proteid is best obtained from eggs and curd cheese. Fat is very necessary in nervous troubles; hence plenty of cream, fresh butter and cream cheese should be taken; also pure oil with the salad.
MALT EXTRACT.
L.F.H. writes.—Is malt extract a good thing to take daily with an ordinary non-flesh diet, two teaspoonfuls or so at breakfast? And is the desiccated or dry malt extract to be preferred to the ordinary sticky article?
Malt extract of good quality, containing an active form of diastase, is a good form of relish to take with meals. The diastase promotes starch digestion and makes a good addition to foods of the cereal order. The thick sticky form is the best because the diastase is then in an active condition. Dried malt usually will have this diastase destroyed, hence, although much more convenient to handle, it is not so good dietetically as the sticky original extract.
ABOUT SUGAR.
C.T. writes.—I have read the article on sugar with considerable interest. I have noted nervous disorders, etc., manifest in cases of excessive consumption of manufactured sugar. I have been an abstainer from cane sugar (all commercial sugars, though I do not know of any objection to milk, sugar) for many years, regarding it as an unnatural excitant and stimulant as well as being inimical to digestion. As a physiologist I have taken immense interest in longevity, feeling that an active life past the age of ninety-five or a hundred, and upwards, carries with it, in evidence of right living, the force of demonstration, and more conclusively, in direct ratio to the advance of years. I firmly believe that all anomalies will ultimately admit of resolution. In this connection I could mention a number of strange and paradoxical cases for which, as yet, I have obtained no solution. I know of centenarians who began using “sugar” freely late in life. In one case, when past eighty, a new set of teeth (not odd “supernumeraries”) appeared all round! How is it, again, that the natives of the West Indies, when living on sugar (in its crude state, I suppose) have excellent teeth and perfect health? Is not raw sugar better the less manufactured it is? On the other side, Captain Diamond, at 114, attributes his health in great measure to abstinence from sugar.
Most of these queries are answered in the completed book[10] published this year. The point about “milk sugar” not being injurious he will find answered on page 72.
[10] The Truth about Sugar, 1s. net. (C.W. Daniel, Ltd.)
“Milk sugars” taken to excess with a mixed diet, or in the form of milk as a beverage, break down into lactic, butyric and other destructive acids under the influence of intestinal germs and thus do harm to the body.
The natives of the West Indies (page 39) take the sugar cane in its natural state as a living vegetable food—a very different thing from the isolated and chemicalised sugar on our tables at home. Moreover, the chewing required helps digestion. This is very different to the drinking rapidly of sugared beverages, which do not receive this necessary mouth preparation.
One is quite prepared to admit that paradoxical cases do occur where sugar seems to agree well even with octogenarians, but they are, in my opinion, the exceptions, and I am constantly coming across cases where the free consumption of table sugars has proved very harmful to both old and young.
ULCERATION OF THE STOMACH.
A.L.M. writes.—Our domestic servant, a girl aged twenty-four, is suffering from ulceration of the stomach and has had periodical attacks for the past six years. She has apparently, until she came to us, eaten and drunk very unwisely. She has been with us seven months and has been fed on a non-flesh diet since she came. For the last four weeks tea, coffee and cocoa have been forbidden, and as little sugar is consumed as possible. She had a very bad attack in August and we had to call in a doctor is we did not like the responsibility. He strongly recommended the hospital and an operation, which would ensure that there would be no repetition of the complaint. She decided to go and was there six weeks. After much experimenting there, inoculating and wondering whether it was tuberculosis, they operated and in due course she came back. We went to the sea for three weeks and shortly after our return the vomiting of blood and pains recommenced. After four days in bed she returned to light dishes, and a fortnight after another slighter attack came on, which in twenty-four hours. She takes hot boiled water five times a day. She suffers also from a horny skin on the palms of her hands, with deep cracks where the natural lines are. These periodically bleed. This skin exists also on her heels and the soles of her feet. Before and after, an attack this skin seems to be worse than ever.
I mentioned the fact of the recurring attacks since the operation to the doctor and he seemed surprised and said the matter must be constitutional and there was no hope for her.
My own opinion is that pure food will put her right eventually, and that these attacks will recur in diminishing force until the poisons are eliminated front the system.
Her diet is at present as follows:—
On rising.—Half-pint of boiled water (hot).
Breakfast.—Either Shredded Wheat softened in hot milk or breakfast flakes and cold milk: followed by either bananas or apples. Half-pint boiled water (hot).
Lunch.—Ordinary vegetarian cooked dishes, vegetables conservatively cooked, some fruit. Half-pint boiled water (hot).
Tea meal.—Wholemeal bread (Artox flour), usually non-yeast, nut butter. Lettuces and radishes when obtainable. Half-pint boiled water (hot).
Before retiring.—Half-pint of boiled water (hot).
It has been shown by Brandl and other investigators that ulceration of the stomach can always be produced in animals by feeding them with an excess of sugar foods. The same thing applies to human beings, who, if fed with an excess of sweetmeats, sugar, milk or soft mushy cereals, will first contract catarrh of the stomach, which will ultimately deepen into a condition of ulceration.
The rationale of the process is this: Fermentation and putrefaction of the foods eaten to excess produce in the stomach various acids and toxins. These become absorbed and pass into the liver. Then the liver becomes clogged, its flow of blood is obstructed and this naturally retards the flow of food from the stomach. That organ becomes congested and inflamed and, when the lower end, or pylorus, is obstructed, this congested state may easily deepen into ulceration. We also nearly always find a tender spine, showing that the nervous system has equally participated in the conditions produced, and this nervous factor intensifies the trouble by retarding the due working of the digestive functions.
What we have to do to cure a case of ulcerated stomach is to withhold the foods which create fermentation. Then the liver will be allowed time to work off the poisons which are clogging its substance and when this has come about the stomach will slowly return to its normal condition.
The diet which our correspondent cites is badly arranged. It is a mistake to give fluid with the meals, and the mushy food at breakfast and the soft food at dinner should be changed to drier and crisper forms of nutriment.
The following diet would be a distinct improvement:—
On rising.—Half-pint of boiled hot water, sipped slowly; or quarter-pint Sanum Tonic Tea, taken hot.
Breakfast.—A Shredded Wheat biscuit eaten dry and well buttered; a lightly boiled egg and some finely grated raw roots, especially carrots and turnips.
In a case of this sort it is best not to mix cereals with fruits.
An alternative breakfast would consist of fruit alone such as two apples, finely grated at first, or two bananas mashed and mixed with pure olive oil and sprinkled with flaked nuts but care must be taken that the pulped banana is well chewed.
Lunch.—Grated cheese, or cream cheese, with some finely chopped salad, or grated raw roots, or conservatively cooked vegetables (preferably roots or onions baked fairly dry by the casserole method) can be taken at this repast. Follow with a slice or two of cold ordinary toast or rusks with butter.
Tea meal.—Half-pint of hot boiled water with a little lemon or orange juice added to it for flavouring.
Supper (about 6.30).—Stale standard bread with butter and curd cheese or an egg. The non-yeast bread should be avoided as in the weak state of the stomach it will not be properly digested; besides, the bran may irritate the lining in the present condition of the stomach. As soon as the stomach has regained its power of digesting food, and the ulcers have healed, then fine wholemeal biscuits of the Wallace or Ixion kind can be taken, but the unfermented bread had better be avoided.
At bedtime.—A half-pint of hot water.
GOING TO EXTREMES IN THE UNFIRED DIET.
W.O.C. writes.—As a bachelor who (not believing in, and therefore doing without domestic help) is anxious to reduce time spent on cooking to a minimum, I shall be glad if Dr Knaggs will tell me whether the use of the oven, pan and kettle are necessary to healthy diet. For instance (1) would a diet of bread and butter, biscuits, cheese, fruit (fresh and dried), ordinary cold water and cold milk, be as healthy as a diet of hot vegetables, puddings, cocoashell, etc.? (2) Are cooked lentils, butter-beans, macaroni, etc., more beneficial taken hot than after they have cooled? (3) Could uncooked vegetables of sufficient nutriment be substituted for these? I shall be glad if it is quite safe to live entirely on raw foods, whether fresh or “prepared.”
The use of the oven, pan and kettle is not essential to a healthy diet, but few people in this changeable, and often cold, depressing climate are willing to forgo their occasional use. One cannot get hot water for a drink without a kettle or a small saucepan and a gas ring, and hot water is often a very comforting and useful drink, especially where an effort is being made to break off the tea and coffee habit.
A diet of bread and butter, biscuits, cheese, fresh and dried fruits is excellent, provided our correspondent also includes grated raw roots and salads as the medicinal part of the regimen, and keeps the fresh fruit to itself as one meal of the day. Cold water or cold milk could also be taken in the place of hot water or hot milk, although I deprecate the use of milk as a beverage unless a person is willing to live entirely on milk like a baby does. The hot vegetables are uncalled for, provided the raw vegetables are substituted for them. The puddings can well be discarded. Cocoashell beverages are useful in very many cases.
Beans or lentils can be eaten sparingly in a raw state if first soaked, then flaked in a Dana machine, and afterwards flavoured with herbs or parsley. I certainly think that, if they are to be cooked, the taste is better if eaten hot; but there is no reason why cold cooked lentils should not be eaten any more than is the case with an other form of cooked food. Uncooked vegetables will not take the place of lentils, because they are of a different order of food-stuff. The uncooked vegetable would go well with the lentils as neutralising agents of the acids into which all nitrogenous foods break down in the body. Most people will find that nuts, cheese and eggs are better sources of proteid than lentils or other “pulse foods.”
H. Valentine Knaggs.
Vol. V
No. 27 October
1913
There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one another.—Claude Bernard.
AN INDICATION.
Just as there is a pride that apes humility, so there is an egotism that apes selfishness, a cowardice that apes stoicism and an indolence that apes effort. This is especially apparent in matters pertaining to health.
How often, on the plea of not causing worry or expense to others, does a man or woman not put off taking necessary rest, or consulting a doctor, until a slight ailment that once would have yielded to treatment becomes an irreparable injury.
Such conduct is often admired as unselfish, but for unselfishness and stoicism a psychologist would read fear, indolence and egotism. Fear of being thought hypochondriacal and fear of facing facts; shrinking from the exertion involved in the effort to become healthy and from the pain involved in witnessing the possible distress and anxiety of friends should the complaint prove serious—regardless of the fact that its neglect and resultant incurability would cause infinitely more distress; above all, that mental egotism which breeds in its victim an unreadiness to acknowledge that he does not know what may be wrong and to take prompt steps to remedy his ignorance.
It is not fair, of course, to attach too much blame to the patient. Such faults as those cited above are in themselves symptoms of nervous disease. Body and mind act and react upon one another. Nevertheless, the practice of the virtues loses its meaning when there is no pull in the opposite direction.—[Eds.]
IMAGINATION IN INSURANCE.
Regular readers will recognise in this article a continuation of the series previously entitled “Healthy Brains.” The author of “The Children All Day Long” is an intimate disciple of one of the greatest living psychologists, and she has a message of the first importance to all who realise that true health depends as much on poise of mind as on physical fitness.
It is an unpleasant subject, but have you ever faced the fact that your widow might be left in poverty?
We all know the phrases that come so glibly from the lips of the insurance agent. Perhaps the very fact that it pays companies to spend thousands a year on the salaries of agents, and other thousands on broadcast eye-catching advertisements, shows that there are many things which our imagination only accepts “against the grain.” Fire, storm, loss by theft or burglary, sickness, disablement and death we do not, by choice, dwell on these things in thought.
Now some people are inclined to pet this impulse of turning away. “Do not think dark thoughts,” they tell us, “the best insurance is unconsciousness, insouciance, denial. Misfortune will pass you by if you do not look for it.”
Perhaps there is something to be said for this method when it comes with absolute spontaneity from the innermost nature. But if for the radiant apprehension of beauty and health we substitute an effort to cling to the picture of good when our very bodies and nerves are warning us with suggestions of evil, we run grave risks. By adopting someone else's sense of freedom from danger and repressing our own conviction that for us a certain danger, more or less remote, exists, we are putting great pressure upon ourselves. At times of ill-health or accidental worry, a sleepless night may bring us an agonising succession of imaginative pictures, those very pictures which we have attempted to banish from our daily life. If we have still greater power of repression these grim images, forbidden throughout every moment of waking life, may reappear in dreams.
(Of the still more serious dangers of repression and of its relation to various forms of insanity, this is hardly the place to speak.[11] It ought not to be necessary to appeal to alarming instances in order to make us attend to a suggested warning.)
[11] See Bernard Hart's illuminating treatment of the whole subject in The Psychology of Insanity, Cambridge Manuals of Science.
Now if we decide to regard all fear as a suggestion of precaution, the emotional part of it to be laid aside as soon as it has fulfilled its function of arousing interest and directing action, it is easy to see the psychological justification for insurance.
Of course pecuniary insurance is but one instance of such sequences of action, though it happens to be a rather obvious one. In a different field, most of us know the delightful feeling of relief experienced after consulting a doctor about some symptom that has perhaps been troubling us for a long time. “May I safely do this? Ought I to refrain from that?” and such perpetually recurring irritations to the attention are replaced by the knowledge that it is now the doctor's business to decide whether this or that is “serious,” and that as long as we carry out his orders we may lay aside all worry about the matter.
So in the case of fire insurance, what we are really buying with our annual premium is freedom from haunting questions as to the loss that would ensue if our house or shop or office were burnt down or damaged. Whenever the thought comes, it may, as far as the money loss is concerned, be dismissed.
We see then that instead of keeping the suggestion of such misfortunes before us, as some people might allege, the act of insurance substitutes for vague and recurrent fears a formal and periodical recognition of possibilities, a recognition, too, that contains within itself a precaution against some of the results of the misfortune should it ever occur. What we buy, at the cost of a fixed number of pounds or shillings of money and a few minutes of time once a year, is the right to put the dangers out of our consciousness altogether and yet leave no residuum of repressed fear to split up our personality or give us indigestion.
If we choose, for some reason or other, to let our imagination dwell on the objective side of the possibility we have insured against, we shall find a pleasure in thinking of what can be done by many people working together. If we need help to meet some misfortune, it is ours as a right, not doled out to us through others' pity. And every year that we have made no claim we have the delight of knowing that we are helping those who need.
The art of working together is yet in its infancy. But if even the present standard of method devised for money insurance were to be adopted in the deeper matters which we so often allow to trouble us, what an advance in mental development we should have made and what new possibilities of safe action would be opened up!
E.M. Cobham.
Every youth should learn to do something finely and thoroughly with his hands.—Ruskin.
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF VEGETALISM.
This article has been translated from the French of Prof. H. Labbé, the head of the laboratoire à la Faculté de Médecine, in Paris. It reflects a rather characteristic aloofness to any considerations other than scientific or economic. But it will well repay careful study.—[Eds.]