[44] Sojourners from the North, at the tropics, are exempt from disease so long as they live on the fruits of the soil; but a beef and brandy regimen makes short work with them.
Winter weather (inoperative, however, for those who spend their time in close, warm rooms), scant clothing, much exercise, fresh air—these conditions, so far as present, and to the extent of a man’s subjection to them, require a larger quantity of food than could be digested under opposite conditions, and tend to mitigate the effects of over-indulgence as to amount and quality. In our climate, however, not one person in ten thousand lives, even in the coldest weather, sufficiently under these influences to require the diet necessary at the poles, viz., three full meals of mixed food, largely composed of fat. Hence, the only palliatives a person can resort to, who adheres to the prevalent mode of living, as to diet, are those conditions that approach as nearly as possible to those obtaining in the frigid zone; but these conditions can not be, at least are not, enjoyed here, to a point rendering exemption from disease possible even for the most robust. But when we reflect upon the fact that our people are not, as a rule, robust (although this would be otherwise but for the unbalanced circumstances under consideration), that they live in warm rooms, wear heavy clothing even within doors, and don thick wraps on going out, work as little as possible (all tending
to the need of abstemiousness), and that in the face of all this they do not, at least to any appreciable extent, voluntarily restrict their appetites, but do, in fact, even in summer, imitate the blubber-eaters of the North, nearer than they do the fruit-eaters of the South; that Sabbath morning finds the New Englander, for example, gorging himself with pork and beans, hot brown bread dripping with butter, hot, strong coffee, etc.; Tuesday, roast-beef, with plenty of gravy; Wednesday—“boiled mutton, with caper sauce,” and so on to Saturday’s boiled dinner, of corned-beef, greasy cabbage, etc. (the diet of the poor differing chiefly in the quality, or price per pound), and this just the same during the warmest week in winter as during the coldest, and regardless of any of the possibly varying circumstances, as hard work out of doors, or light work, or none at all, within; and that this same folly runs into and becomes greater folly in the spring and summer even, except so far as nausea or lack of appetite cause an involuntary modification,—in view of all this we need not look altogether, nor indeed at all, to heredity to account for the wretched disorders to which we, as a people, are subject, and which prevail to an extent almost transforming our literary and art periodicals into indirect partnership-relations with the manufacturers of quack “remedies” for all forms of sickness; this class of advertisers pay too liberally to exclude their flaunting lies. I look almost in vain for even a religious journal that refuses to devote any portion of its space to medical advertisements. Do our religious
editors themselves believe in, and take, the “pills” they advertise?
Bright’s Disease is one that never attacks those who live on coarse food, live abstemiously, and drink water chiefly. It is rather a disease of “high livers.” But a man does not need a large income to ensure this affection: any one who can get all he wants to eat and drink, and who eats and drinks all he “wants” (even without indulgence in wine, or alcohol in any form, which is a prolific cause of this disorder), may safely reckon on some of the symptoms, if not upon the worst form of the disease; and whether it be the understood cause of his death or not, it will surely be a contributing cause. The possession of typically healthy kidneys is a rare circumstance in this climate. The excessive micturition so universal in infancy, occasioned by excess in diet, is the beginning of renal disease.
Dr. Bright immortalized his name by discovering the fact that, when a man’s last sickness is attended with a certain class of symptoms, as albumen in the urine, final suppression of the urine, and uremic poisoning, they are occasioned by a peculiar disease or degeneration of the kidney. From a practical stand-point we care nothing about the kind of change taking place in the kidney, but rather ask what kind of change in our habits will keep this, and all the organs of the body, in a healthy condition? The former study is all well enough for those who desire it, but if too much time is devoted to it, and to the relation of drugs thereto, by an individual, he may be, probably
will be, the very least fitted to advise an inquirer who desires to know what he can do to be saved from disease and the supposed necessity of taking medicine. Says Dr. Dickinson (ibid., chap. VI.): “There are few disorders which are more under the influence of medicine than is the catarrhal inflammation of the kidneys.” And the very next sentence is one worth pondering on by those who are accustomed to take medicine whenever they come to grief through ignorance or neglect of the laws of life: “Under some plans of treatment,” says this celebrated authority, in continuing, “plans which formerly were almost universally adopted, and still have their advocates, the disorder is one of heavy mortality. Under other circumstances the danger is so small, that if once the complaint be recognized, a recovery may be reckoned upon in a large proportion of cases. Without treatment of any kind there is reason to suppose that a large majority of the subjects of it would recover.” (The italics are my own.) From this it will be observed that it depends on one’s luck whether he shall fall into the hands of a practitioner who belongs to a class still adhering to the plan ensuring a “heavy mortality,” or of one whose modified form of treatment is less fatal; and upon his good sense, whether he shall come under the influence of either, or adopt the methods indicated herein, viz., the abandonment of disease-producing, and the adoption of ease-producing, habits, which would be an immense gain over the “no treatment” plan which, according to a rational interpretation of Dr. Dickinson’s language,
is the safest of the three referred to by him. From the three-hundred-page treatise before me, which is fresh from the mint (1881), and is a most valuable book for those who wish to study the pathology of the disease (Bright’s), but which is little calculated to aid any one healthward, except he be already pretty well informed in hygienic matters, I cull, in addition to the paragraphs already quoted, the following little nugget of pure gold: “We must avoid the use of any drugs which, under the name of stimulating diuretics, might exasperate the existing congestion; and we must enforce such diet as to reduce to a minimum that nitrogenous excess which finds its way out chiefly by the kidneys, and provides in many shapes effective means of irritation. Physiological repose is to be sought, not by debarring the gland of the harmless and necessary solvent, but by cutting off the materials of urea and uric acid.” How naturally, then, do we look for the continuing sentiments: “‘Spare diet and spring water clear’ may often be found sufficient though simple remedies. Of all diuretics water is the best.”[45] But how can we reconcile, with such counsel, the treatment that he himself commonly adopts?
[45] Ibid., p. 86. The italics are my own, and I am amazed to find that this best diuretic is rarely the one used, and never fairly tested by this authority, who seems almost to exhaust the materia medica in the treatment of even infants of tender age.
In one case noted by him, and in which, as he says, “the attack was slight,” and “the boy became convalescent,” but later, although under the doctor’s own eye