It is certain that sedentary men, and men of hard-worked intellects, are greatly in need of some means of distributing the circulation through the muscles. Exercise is the means. When the avocations are such as to render continuous exercise in the open air difficult or impossible, we should seek to compensate for this by variety of gentle activities distributed throughout the day. No error is more common than that of supposing open-air exercise to be indispensable to health: we may have no time for walking, rowing, riding or any of the ordinary modes of out-door activity, yet—as the excellent health and strength of domestic servants, who scarcely ever stir out, will show—the mere activity of the body, in various occupations, suffices for the equalization of the circulation. Let the sedentary stand as well as sit, changing the posture frequently, and using back and arms as variously as possible. A variety of gentle activities is more beneficial to the student than bursts of violent exercise. Above all things, remember that in exercise, as in diet, the grand rule is moderation. Avoid fatigue; as you would cease eating when appetite abates, cease muscular activity when the impulse to continue it abates.
In general, the healthy man may eat almost anything in moderation; but it is wiser for all to avoid meat twice cooked, rich gravies and fried dishes. Nature tells us very plainly that that pleasure is a means no less than an end. The exercise which has in it the element of amusement is ten times as beneficial as a listless walk; and the meal which is eaten with a relish is far more nutritious than a meal eaten only as a periodical necessity. Solitary walks along familiar or uninteresting roads, or solitary meals on dishes unstimulating to the palate, are not to be compared with rambles through interesting tracts, or with stimulating companions, and meals where the guests, no less than dishes, add their pleasurable excitement.
There is one point of regimen to which attention may be called, and that is, never to attempt severe mental or bodily labor after a full meal. If possible, let all such labor be got through in the early part of the day, after breakfast, but before dinner; not only because the bodily vigor is then greatest, but also because the restoration of that vigor through dinner should not be interfered with. We know that in many cases this advice is impracticable. Night-work is inevitable in some lives, and is fancied to be so in the lives of students and literary men. In such cases, there is, at least, this mitigating resource—not to commence hard work until the labor of digestion is over. Thousands ruin their digestion by disregarding this simple advice. If work after dinner be inevitable, let the dinner be a very light one, and let a light supper be eaten.
In order to prove the facts above cited, a physician of our acquaintance tried the experiment upon two healthy dogs. They were both fed alike and in similar quantities, one being allowed to rest in quiet an hour after feeding, and the other permitted to run around and frolic for a similar length of time. Both dogs were then killed, and the food of the one allowed to rest was quite digested, while that of the other was scarcely digested at all.
No better general advice can be given in conclusion than that furnished us by the greatest physician of the present time, Dr. Willard Parker, now enjoying rugged health at the advanced age of eighty, and being a living example of the truth of his reasoning.
The blood will be either good or bad, according as the material or food is good or bad. The character of blood made depends on the kind of food taken. In this country, as a rule, too much meat is eaten; meat once a day is sufficient, especially for brain workers. The waste matter from a meat diet is eliminated through the kidneys. Too much labor thrown upon those organs produces disease. An overloaded stomach is unfavorable to active brain work. Man is like an engine with two service pipes, one for the brain and one for the body, and no man has the requisite force to work both at once. Generally Americans bolt their food. It should be cooked. The first process of cooking a steak is on the range; the second is in the mouth, and this is done by working the saliva into the food by chewing. Thus is the food prepared to be acted upon by the juices of the stomach. Infants in nursing move the jaws to obtain the milk, and the working of the infant’s jaw mixes the milk with the saliva, and thus fits that milk to go into the stomach. After being subjected to the action of the stomach for two or three hours the food becomes fitted to pass into the circulation by absorption. To have good food, therefore, it is necessary that it be made of proper material properly prepared. We are furnished with milk to start with as we enter the world. Had meat been the best diet, we should have been born with beefsteaks in our hands. But we are given milk. Milk and blood are nearer alike than any other two fluids; a large proportion of each is water. After milk, breadstuffs and vegetables are the best diet, and in warm climates fruit. Then meats. Sugar and fat go into the body not so much to nourish it as to be a fuel to give it warmth. Meat contains much nitrogenous matter.
A limited quantity of spirits at the principal meal, especially for persons advanced in life or of weak digestion, may aid in the combustion of the food. Spirits aid digestion in feeble and aged persons; but only the feeble or the aged require such a stimulus. The young and vigorous do not need it, and are better off without it. Middle aged persons may perhaps drink a little spirit with their meals without danger; but they cannot safely make it a beverage. In small quantities alcoholic drinks stimulate, and if not enough is taken to coagulate the pepsin and the albumen in the food they promote digestion in proper cases, and thus help to repair the system. But whenever more alcoholic liquor is taken into the stomach with the food than is demanded it passes into the circulation, disturbs the action of the heart, flushes the face and confuses the brain. When so much fermented or distilled liquor is taken into the system that the functions of the organism are disturbed positive harm is done—the system has been so far poisoned. An irritation has been set up instead of the desired healthful stimulation of the stomach.
The human system contains water, fat, starch, sugar, nitrogenous substances, iron, sulphur, phosphorus, animal quinine, sodium potassium and chlorine; but no alcohol is found. It has no like in the system, hence there is nothing that it can repair, and it cannot, therefore, be ranked as a food of any kind. It possesses an inherent deleterious property, which, when introduced into the system, is capable of destroying life, and it has its place with arsenic, belladonna, prussic acid and opium. Like these, it is to be employed as a medicine, and has its true position in works on materia medica. It is both a poison and a medicine.
It has been settled by science that alcohol, which passes into the blood when more is taken than can be employed as a condiment or tonic, undergoes no change in the blood, but exists there as a foreign substance, creating irritation; and the excitement involved in the effort to throw off the irritating substance wastes the energy and life of the system. After alcohol has produced disease of the stomach it next expends its force upon the neighboring organs, inducing disease of the liver and dropsy or Bright’s disease, both of which are fatal to health, if not to life.
The life insurance companies understand it. Their figures show that while a temperate young man at twenty may reasonably look forward to forty-four years and two months of life, the young man of the same age who poisons his system with drink can expect not more than fifteen years and six months. He who uses alcohol becomes an easy prey of epidemics; his system cannot resist the poison of diphtheria, cholera and fevers.