CHAPTER XVI.
Rational Sanitation and Hygiene.
We, all of us, like to use things; indulgence is enjoyable, but it generally ends with the day. Few of us “take thought of the morrow.” Neglecting, as we do, the instruments of use, their availability for permanent subservience to our wants steadily diminishes, becoming finally lost. Is it that we do not know any better, or is it that we are really so intoxicated with the Present that we simply ignore the well-known claims of the Permanent? Whatever the explanation may be, it is nevertheless passing strange that little or no care is bestowed on either our external or internal servitors, instruments, or organs, which otherwise are ever ready to keep us well filled with the pure wine of joy. Perhaps it is that many of us find Nature so lavish in supplying us with the means of joy that we are naturally equally lavish in wasting them. True economy—that is, the conserving of means for their effective use—is yet to be learned by man. Especially is this the case with our interior means, our flesh, blood, nerves, vital force, etc. Nature seems so ready to recoup and renew the organic loss incurred by our use or indulgence—recuperation seems so easy—that we simply grow careless, reckless, prodigal, and before we are fairly aware of it the disintegrative process gains an ascendency over the restorative, and thenceforward our time will be spent in endeavoring to cure what might have been kept whole or well.
Nor is it an organ of the body here and there that we neglect or abuse; it is more especially the entire system of organs called “the body.” The body is the organ of man’s spirit. We give no heed to its tones; perhaps we have never caught its rhythm; certain it is that when but a short time in our perverted hands its chords are more or less jangled, and a minor part is played in the grand symphony of life.
The organ of man’s spirit! How rational, nay, how necessary, it would seem to be to keep that instrument keyed to its perfect work!
But the ordinary denizen of civilization has a most ridiculous ideal of physical capability, namely, that the savage—a being altogether “physical”—was able to retain a healthy body till ripe old age without attention either to sanitary surroundings or to the hygienic functioning of his system of organs. The “civilizee’s” fancy picture of the noble savage is not based upon verifiable fact. It is true that we have a few attractive myths concerning savages that had survived appalling hardship; but we are just learning of the innumerable host that have perished periodically of various contagious diseases, and of the countless number (infants, youths, and adults) that have suffered from all sorts of ailments. Alas! how little we know—or, for that matter, how little we seem to care—of the great multitude of “civilized” fellow-creatures whose lives are all jangled and out of tune through subjection to the many ills that flesh seems heir to; ills that have arisen through either ignorance or the voluntary ignoring of the light of accessible knowledge!
In another aspect the human race is like an army that concerns itself with its immediate and imperative duties and has no time or thought to bestow on those that fall out of the ranks. But slaves to stern duty offend against Nature’s normality as do slaves to desire; and the former little suspect that their retirement also is near at hand. In health we seldom or never think of the conditions for the maintenance of health. That these conditions should receive our prime attention is obvious when we contemplate for a moment (1) our race of invalids, and (2) the growing unsanitary condition of modern industrialism, involving, as industrialism perforce must, the unsanitary life of the factory, workshop, office, and hothouse home.
Again, with the advance of high-pressure civilization and culture human beings are developing a more highly sensitive physical organism, pitched to finer issues. How urgent the necessity for a greater safeguarding of that organism!
If it be claimed that many of us do live up to our knowledge of health conditions, and that we are notwithstanding unwell, I would answer that our knowledge now is very disconnected, and that when the time shall come that our itemistic information shall have coalesced and formed a system of principles, we will then have trustworthy rules for the acquisition of health habits and become completely normal physical beings. At present most of us are intemperate in one or more ways. We eat too much or too little—too rich or too poor food. So it is with our drinking, our sleeping, our sporting, our enjoyment of this or that excitement—the quantity or the quality of each of these is not well adapted or proportioned to the conditions of normality.