There is as great an inequality in the inheritance of health as in the heirship of wealth or brains. Some are born with a fortune of vigour and soundness so large that not a lifetime of eager squandering will leave them poor, and others enter the world paupers of so dire a need that no charity of medicine will ever raise them to comfort; but most of us have just that mediocre legacy of vitality which makes us indistinguishable units in the mass. It lies in the hands of each to improve or waste that property as he chooses, for there are self-made men physically as well as financially, and spendthrifts of health come to as sorrowful an end as prodigals of gold. The body is a realm where a wise ruler brings happiness as surely as a foolish one ensures distress, and wisdom here, as elsewhere, lies in the observance of natural laws.
It is just these natural laws—simple, severe, inexorable—against which the majority chafe, for which some magic pill or potion is offered as a substitute. Temperance, cleanliness, activity, are the three cardinal virtues of the body, as faith, hope, and charity are of the soul. As tithes of mint, anise, and cumin are easier to render than the observance of law, justice, and judgment, so burnt-offerings of drugs are offered to the Goddess Hygeia in place of obedience to her regimen. After the excesses of the carnival came the brief rigours of the Lenten retreat, and after the Fat Tuesday of gluttony comes the short atonement of the "Cure" at some mineral spring, where the priests of health are yielded a complete but passing submission. It is easier to repeat incessant formulæ of prayer than persistently to keep one's self unspotted from the world, and it is easier for fat old sinners to paddle about barefoot in the dew at a Kneippe cure than to abandon at once and forever their little darling sins of greediness or indolence. One hears a constant cry of "Lo, Here!" and "Lo, There!" and all the world rushes to sit hopefully under blue glass or swathe itself in pure wool in the ever-renewed belief that some substitute may be found for the fatiguing necessity of obedience to the three rules.
Even yet ill health is considered as a sort of supernatural visitation rather than a certain result of the infringement of plain laws. I remember reading once a clever book, less popular than it deserved to be, which told of a country in the heart of the Andes in which the intelligent inhabitants looked upon crime as the unfortunate result of congenital temperament; a disease demanding sympathy and treatment; but ill health aroused only condemnation as a wilful infringement of wise and well understood laws. A bronchial case caused arrest and imprisonment, and friends of the family considered it rude to cough in the presence of the criminal's unfortunate family; but a severe attack of embezzlement was cause of polite condolence, and cards were left upon the invalid with kind inquiries as to whether he was receiving the best moral attention. An idea less whimsical than it may seem.
Paracelsus—who was accused of magic because his cures were effected by such simple means—always asserted that if he were allowed to absolutely direct a child's diet from its birth he could build up a constitution which might without difficulty be made to last out a century in undiminished vigour; and there are those who are prepared to accept literally the age of the antediluvian patriarchs, on the ground that as at that time bread had not been discovered, digestions never called upon to struggle with starch found no difficulty in sustaining life to Methuselah's term.
It is certain that the subtle but supremely important chemistry of nutrition has been shamefully neglected in favour of matters far less germane to happiness, and that the same skill which has developed the science of bacteriology and pursued the most elusive microbe to his most secret lair might have been more profitably applied. After the microbe has been found and named his dangerousness remains unattenuated. How much more valuable would be a knowledge—equally attainable—of exactly the amount and nature of the food for the best results of growth and health.
There is a farmer ant in the West Indies, who, in a carefully prepared soil, compounded of flowers and leaves, grows a tiny fungus on which he feeds. The eggs of this ant seem, when hatched, to produce creatures all alike, but through different feeding they develop into warriors, farmers, or queens, as may be needed. If through an accident the supply of warriors is dangerously lowered, larvæ being fed with the meat which nourishes farmers are transferred to the soldiers' nursery, and change of diet produces change of nature.
Ah! could we too know upon what meat to feed our Cæsars, or Roosevelts, that they might grow so great. What a much more important achievement that would be than the naming of microbes which would be impotent to injure a perfectly nourished body.
To know the law, to practise it daily—there is the secret of the fountain of youth, the elixir of life. These Christian Scientists, who practise the latest abracadabra to conjure away the effects of fixed causes, who dream that pain arises from sin, and can be abolished by faith, childishly overlook the fact that pain in itself is no evil, but rather a good. It is simply a telegraphic message sent over the nerve-wires to the brain to inform it that some member of the physical commonwealth is in danger and requires help.