down with it sooner or later, and, with her whole physical conditions so against her, that recovery would be almost a miracle, under the prevailing system of treatment. Just recall the scores of cases where you, my dear reader, have been surprised at the death of this or that friend, “always so strong and well.” In fact, this is so common that we expect to be surprised continually, and are not much surprised when we are!
How many healthy-born infants die before their first year is reached—babies that for months are mistakenly regarded as pictures of health—“never knew a sick day until they were attacked” with cholera-infantum, scarlatina, or something else. They are crammed with food, made gross with fat, and for a time are active and cunning, the delight of parents and friends—and then, after a season of constipation, a season of chronic vomiting, and a season of cholera-infantum, the little emaciated skeletons are buried in the ground away from the sight of those who have literally loved them to death. This is the fate of one-third of all the children born. As a rule, babies are fed as an ignorant servant feeds the cook-stove—filling the fire-box so full, often, that the covers are raised, the stove smokes and gases at every hole, and the fire is either put out altogether, or, if there is combustion of the whole body of coals, the stove is rapidly burned out and destroyed. With baby, “overheating” means the fever that consumes him, and, in “putting out the fire,” too often the fire of life goes out also.[3]
[3] For a thorough discussion of this question see the author’s work on Infant Dietetics, entitled “How to Feed the Baby” New York: Fowler & Wells.
“For the preservation of life God has ordained certain laws to be observed, the neglect of which necessarily brings disease and premature death.” Hence it is that if any of us are sick—except from accidents or congenital causes—it is our own fault. If we have dyspepsia, and the endless afflictions resulting from this parent of diseases, it is our own fault—either of ignorance or carelessness. If neuralgia, “sciatica,” rheumatism, gout, or sick-headache afflicts us, we can thank ourselves; for the simple question is—whether it will “pay” to keep clear of them? It is all very fine to bowl along without thought; to eat, drink, and breathe, without using our brains or consciences, and to shun the best products of the brains of others who make this subject the study of their lives, and when the inevitable sickness comes shift the responsibility on to the Lord. It is rank blasphemy, nevertheless.
In the struggle of life, when so many of His children are engrossed in the vital question of bread-winning; when to obtain the mere necessities of life, or, at most, these and the ordinary comforts, requires all the time, early and late, of so large a portion of the human family, it is not to be supposed that the Creator designed that the due and proper care of the body—its development and the maintenance of a healthy state—should be a matter of such complications as to be beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals, or require the expenditure of an amount of time that would prove embarrassing to all, and totally impossible to many. Nor should Christians conclude
that an “all-wise, all-merciful, and all-powerful Father” designed that the creatures formed in “His own likeness” should alone, of all created beings, be necessarily subject to the multifarious forms of disease, that in fact, under present conditions, do so continually afflict them. Happily such conclusions are not borne out by rational experience; for, in practice, it is found that not only is less trouble and expense required to keep well, than to pursue a course that is promotive of disease; and to get well when disease is really fastened upon us, than to continue the general regimen that has worked the mischief, and seek to counteract it by poisonous drugs; but in fact it has been clearly shown by innumerable living examples, that neither much time, trouble, or expense is necessary to maintain the body in a state of absolute health—perfect ease and comfort—when once this state has been reached, or to restore to comparative health a large proportion of “miserable sinners” who, without a radical change in their mode of life, must continue to suffer from their self-inflicted pains.
It requires no more time to breathe pure than impure air—and no more time or expense to obtain it: it is as free as air, and will fill our homes, without money and without price, unless we seal them against its admission. The poorest factory-operative that goes by the bell, can with a pint of water and a single towel, if need be, take a three-minute bath any or every morning, if he appreciates its importance and is conscientious in his living. It costs no more to eat enough than to over-indulge the appetite, as is the
universal rule, high and low, until nausea and lack of appetite compel abstinence or moderation. It costs money to poison the system with beer or tobacco, and thus shorten one’s life and impair its usefulness, and transmit evil moral and physical tendencies to his offspring, but it is a ten-fold saving to keep clear of these evils. And so it proves throughout the list: it is cheap to keep well, and dear to get sick.
“So to observe Nature as to learn her laws and obey them, is to observe the commandments of the Lord to do them. It has so long been the habit to exalt the mind as the noble, spiritual, and immortal part, at the expense of the body, as the vile, material and mortal part, that, while it is not thought at all strange that every possible care and attention should be given to mental cultivation, a person who should give the same sort of careful attention to his body would be thought somewhat meanly of. And yet I am sure that a wise man who would ease best the burden of life, can not do better than watchfully to keep undefiled and holy—that is, healthy—the noble temple of his body. Is it not a glaring inconsistency that men should pretend to fall into ecstasies of admiration of the temples which they have built with their own hands, and to claim reverence for their ruins, and, at the same time, should have no reverence for, or should actually speak contemptuously of, that most complex, ingenious, and admirable structure which the human body is? However, if they really neglect it, it is secure of its revenge—no one will come to much by his most strenuous mental exercises, except upon the