How to be Happy Though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage

by E. J. Hardy

Of course health may be impaired quite as much by doing too little work as by doing too much. This truth was enforced by Thackeray, when, addressing a medical friend, he exclaimed, "Doctor, there is not in the whole of your pharmacopœia so sovereign a remedy as hard work." All depends upon the temperament and constitution. What kills one man cures another. General Sir Charles Napier, who was not physically a strong man, declared that for the first time he had discovered what total immunity from "malaise" meant when he took to working seventeen hours a day at Cephalonia, as acting Governor or Commissioner of the Ionian Islands.

Not all but by far the largest part of the cure of nervous depression rests with the patient. Change, exercise, fresh air, diet, tonics—all these together will not cure any one who gives up and gives way.

Above all, we should try to be cheerful. A clerical friend, at a celebrated watering-place, met a lady who seemed hovering on the brink of the grave. Her cheeks were hollow and wan, her manner listless, her step languid, and her brow wore the severe contraction so indicative both of mental and physical suffering, so that she was to all observers an object of sincere pity. Some years afterward he encountered this same lady; but so bright, and fresh, and youthful, so full of healthful buoyancy, and so joyous in expression, that he questioned the lady if he had not deceived himself with regard to identity. "Is it possible," said he, "that I see before me Mrs. B. who presented such a doleful appearance at the Springs several years ago?" "The very same." "And pray tell me the secret of your cure. What means did you use to attain to such vigour of mind and body, to such cheerfulness and rejuvenation?" "A very simple remedy," returned she, with a beaming face; "I stopped worrying and began to laugh; that was all."

We would call the attention of heads of families to the following mistakes which the "Sanitary Record" lately enumerated: "It is a mistake to labour when you are not in a fit condition to do so. To think that the more a person eats the healthier and stronger he will become. To go to bed at midnight and rise at daybreak, and imagine that every hour taken from sleep is an hour gained. To imagine that if a little work or exercise is good, violent or prolonged exercise is better. To conclude that the smallest room in the house is large enough to sleep in. To eat as if you only had a minute to finish the meal in, or to eat without an appetite, or continue after it has been satisfied, merely to satisfy the taste. To believe that children can do as much work as grown people, and that the more hours they study the more they learn. To imagine that whatever remedy causes one to feel immediately better (as alcoholic stimulants) is good for the system, without regard to the after-effects. To take off proper clothing out of season because you have become heated. To sleep exposed to a direct draught in any season. To think that any nostrum or patent medicine is a specific for all the diseases flesh is heir to."

There are few things more important to health than the due adjustment of play and work. The school at which a boy ten years of age is made to work at his tasks for the same time as a lad of sixteen ought to be avoided by all parents. If health is to be preserved in early youth, the child must be treated on the same principle as a foal would be. He, or she, must be allowed to a great extent to "run wild," and "lessons" must be carefully graduated to the bodily powers.

Those mothers who are inclined to dose their children too much should be reminded that it was during the days when physic flourished in the nursery that the greatest amount of disease was found. It is not by medicine, but by acting in accordance with natural laws, that health of body and health of mind and morals can be secured at home. Without a knowledge of such laws, the mother's love too often finds its recompense only in the child's coffin.

In the management of their children's health some mothers are guided by everybody and everything except by nature herself. And yet the child's healthy instincts are what alone should be followed.

Sir Samuel Garth, physician to George I., was a member of the Kit-Kat Club. Coming to the club one night, he said he must soon be gone, having many patients to attend; but some good wine being produced, he forgot them. Sir Richard Steele was of the party, and reminded him of the visits he had to pay. Garth pulled out his list, which amounted to fifteen, and said, "It's no great matter whether I see them to-night or not; for nine of them have such bad constitutions that all the physicians in the world can't save them; and the other six have such good constitutions that all the physicians in the world can't kill them."

Probably the carelessness of many people about their health may be explained in the same way. They think either that their constitutions are so good that nothing can injure them or else that they are so bad that nothing can make them better. And often it is a bottle of wine or some other indulgence of appetite that keeps health away. We have heard of a well-known character who, having had many severe attacks of gout, and who, getting into years, and having a cellar of old port wine, upon which he drew somewhat considerably, was advised by his physician to give up the port, and for the future to drink a certain thin claret not very expensive. Said the gentleman in reply to this suggestion: "I prefer my gout with my port, to being cured of my gout with that claret of yours!" Of a delicate man who would not control his appetite it was said, "One of his passions which he will not resist is for a particular dish, pungent, savoury, and multifarious, which sends him almost every night into Tartarus." Talking of the bad effects of late hours Sydney Smith said of a distinguished diner-out that it would be written on his tomb, "He dined late." "And died early," added Luttrell.

Such people ought to be told that in playing tricks with their health they are committing a very great sin. "Perhaps," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature's dictates, they regard simply as grievances, not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents, and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime; yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily transgression is recognized; but none appear to infer that, if this bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression. The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are physical sins."