The Natural Cure of Consumption, Constipation, Bright's Disease, Neuralgia, Rheumatism, "Colds" (Fevers), Etc. / How Sickness Originates, and How to Prevent It. A Health Manual for the People.

by C. E. Page

CHAPTER XVIII.
APPETITE—CONTINENCE.

Appetite, in a general sense, means a natural degree of hunger (not craving), sufficient to give relish for any kind of wholesome food. “We often hear people say they have no taste for this or that article of plain food, although many such have an insatiable appetite for all the dainties of the table. Morbid appetites are thus engendered by continuous habits of indulgence. Natural appetites are first enfeebled and then vitiated; health of body is slowly and insidiously impaired, until, by and by, innate nobility and hopeful youth and strength become effeminate, fastidious, weak, irascible, and selfish; and though outwardly, perhaps, refined and delicate, the person inwardly becomes inactive, apathetic, and unhelpful to himself and to the world. The natural sun of heat and life within the body and the soul, being overcast by the clouds and exhalations of unhealthy organs, often leads the victim of self-indulgence to seek externally for artificial stimulants to keep up an appearance of genial warmth within—but this can only be apparently successful for a time; and soon the penalty of the transgression of the laws of nature must be paid

in full, and with, a large additional amount of costs. It is of great importance, therefore, to watch the appetites of body and of mind; to study the laws of healthy equilibrium; and, above all, to learn to know and understand the dangers of prolonged self-indulgence of the appetites of pleasure in mere animal sensation and wild imagination. Appetite, properly so called, apprises man of the natural wants of the organism, and compliance with these internal promptings is rewarded by the double pleasure of the sense of taste in eating, and the feeling of comfort within, arising from the food supplied to the digestive system. But where the mind is weak and the delights of bodily sensation strong, the pleasures of taste or the charm of varied sensations in the palate dwell on the imagination and excite it to renewed indulgence of physical sensations, irrespective of the wants of the internal organism, and this even notwithstanding its declining health and manifest debility.” The morbid cravings of the sense of perverted taste, or any other sense, must not be confounded, therefore, with the natural appetite excited by the wants of the internal organism. “In the bear tribes there is a marked preference for honey manifested, which reveals a sense of taste that works on the imagination, and leads him to incur the risk of being stung to death by an infuriated swarm of bees rather than forego the sensual delights of plundering the hive and licking out the honeycomb when he is master of the spoils. The swollen head and face and ears are nothing to the charm of sensual indulgence.” When I observe the sufferers from sick-headache

or neuralgia (see Rheumatism), with swollen face and bandaged head, I am forcibly reminded of the honey-loving bear.

No expert can observe the habits of the people and fail to account for all the diseases that afflict the human family. Victims of disobedience to the natural laws—they have done the things they ought not to have done, and have left undone the things they ought to have done, and (consequently) there is no health in them. Diseases—how slowly we accept their teaching—how blind we are to their warning voice! The word itself is not understood. The term disease is popularly applied only to the most serious forms, such as have been named, when it is properly applicable to any condition other than the normal condition of the body—perfect ease. Acidity, heartburn, flatulence, slight pains in the head, uneasy sensations of whatever sort—so little regarded until too late—are they not dis-ease? They speak plainly of indigestion,—the causes of which are recited elsewhere;—they are to the body what the degree-points are to the thermometer, and require only to be conscientiously considered to ensure freedom from disturbance.

Other appetites there are which become morbid and too often control the individual, instead of being themselves under entire subjection to him.

The unnatural habits of our civilization have caused the race to depart from the natural instinct of

CONTINENCE

which, to the minds of many, is as essential to the