Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People

by John Brown

Health is a word that you all have some notion of, but you will perhaps have a clearer idea of it when I tell you what the word comes from. Health was long ago wholth, and comes from the word whole or hale. The Bible says, "They that are whole need not a physician"; that is, healthy people have no need of a doctor. Now, a man is whole when, like a bowl or any vessel, he is entire, and has nothing broken about him; he is like a watch that goes well, neither too fast nor too slow. But you will perhaps say, "You doctors should be able to put us all to rights, just as a watchmaker can clean and sort a watch; if you can't, what are you worth?" But the difference between a man and a watch is, that you must try to mend the man when he is going. You can't stop him and then set him agoing; and, you know, it would be no joke to a watchmaker, or to the watch, to try and clean it while it was going. But God, who does everything like himself, with his own perfectness, has put inside each of our bodies a Doctor of his own making,—one wiser than we with all our wisdom. Every one of us has in himself a power of keeping and setting his health right. If a man is overworked, God has ordained that he desires rest, and that rest cures him. If he lives in a damp, close place, free and dry air cures him. If he eats too much, fasting cures him. If his skin is dirty, a good scrubbing and a bit of yellow soap will put him all to rights.

What we call disease or sickness is the opposite of health, and it comes on us,—1st. By descent from our parents. It is one of the surest of all legacies; if a man's father and mother are diseased, naturally or artificially, he will have much chance to be as bad, or worse. 2dly. Hard work brings on disease, and some kinds of work more than others. Masons who hew often fall into consumption; laborers get rheumatism, or what you call "the pains"; painters get what is called their colic, from the lead in the paint, and so on. In a world like ours, this set of causes of disease and ill health cannot be altogether got the better of; and it was God's command, after Adam's sin, that men should toil and sweat for their daily bread; but more than the half of the bad effects of hard work and dangerous employments might be prevented by a little plain knowledge, attention, and common sense. 3dly. Sin, wickedness, foolish and excessive pleasures, are a great cause of disease. Thousands die from drinking, and from following other evil courses. There is no life so hard, none in which the poor body comes so badly off, and is made so miserable, as the life of a drunkard or a dissolute man. I need hardly tell you, that this cause of death and disease you can all avoid. I don't say it is easy for any man in your circumstances to keep from sin; he is a foolish or ignorant man who says so, and that there are no temptations to drinking. You are much less to blame for doing this than people who are better off; but you CAN keep from drinking, and you know as well as I do, how much better and happier, and healthier and richer and more respectable you will be if you do so. 4thly and lastly. Disease and death are often brought on from ignorance, from not knowing what are called the laws of health,—those easy, plain, common things which, if you do, you will live long, and which, if you do not do, you will die soon.

Now, I would like to make a few simple statements about this to you; and I will take the body bit by bit, and tell you some things that you should know and do in order to keep this wonderful house that your soul lives in, and by the deeds done in which you will one day be judged,—and which is God's gift and God's handiwork,—clean and comfortable, hale, strong, and hearty; for you know that, besides doing good to ourselves and our family and our neighbors with our bodily labor, we are told that we should glorify God in our bodies as well as in our souls, for they are his, more his than ours,—he has bought them by the blood of his Son Jesus Christ. We are not our own, we are bought with a price; therefore ought we to glorify God with our souls and with our bodies, which are his.

Now, first, for the skin. You should take great care of it, for on its health a great deal depends; keep it clean, keep it warm, keep it dry, give it air; have a regular scrubbing of all your body every Saturday night; and, if you can manage it, you should every morning wash not only your face, but your throat and breast, with cold water, and rub yourself quite dry with a hard towel till you glow all over. You should keep your hair short if you are men; it saves you a great deal of trouble and dirt.

Then, the inside of your head,—you know what is inside your head,—your brain; you know how useful it is to you. The cleverest pair of hands among you would be of little use without brains: they would be like a body without a soul, a watch with the mainspring broken. Now, you should consider what is best for keeping the brain in good trim. One thing of great consequence is regular sleep, and plenty of it. Every man should have at the least eight hours in his bed every four-and-twenty hours, and let him sleep all the time if he can; but even if he lies awake it is a rest to his wearied brain, as well as to his wearied legs and arms. Sleep is the food of the brain. Men may go mad and get silly, if they go long without sleep. Too much sleep is bad; but I need hardly warn you against that, or against too much meat. You are in no great danger from these.

Then, again, whiskey and all kinds of intoxicating liquors in excess are just so much poison to the brain. I need not say much about this, you all know it; and we all know what dreadful things happen when a man poisons his brain and makes it mad, and like a wild beast with drink; he may murder his wife, or his child, and when he comes to himself he knows nothing of how he did it, only the terrible thing is certain, that he did do it, and that he may be hanged for doing something when he was mad, and which he never dreamt of doing when in his senses: but then he knows that he made himself mad, and he must take all the wretched and tremendous consequences.

From the brains we go to the lungs,—you know where they are,—they are what the butchers call the lichts; here they are, they are the bellows that keep the fire of life going; for you must know that a clever German philosopher has made out that we are all really burning,—that our bodies are warmed by a sort of burning or combustion, as it is called,—and fed by breath and food, as a fire is fed with coals and air.

Now the great thing for the lungs is plenty of fresh air, and plenty of room to play in. About seventy thousand people die every year in Britain from that disease of the lungs called consumption,—that is, nearly half the number of people in the city of Edinburgh; and it is certain that more than the half of these deaths could be prevented if the lungs had fair play. So you should always try to get your houses well ventilated, that means to let the air be often changed, and free from impure mixtures; and you should avoid crowding many into one room, and be careful to keep everything clean, and put away all filth; for filth is not only disgusting to the eye and the nose, but is dangerous to the health. I have seen a great deal of cholera, and been surrounded by dying people, who were beyond any help from doctors, and I have always found that where the air was bad, the rooms ill ventilated, cleanliness neglected, and drunkenness prevailed, there this terrible scourge, which God sends upon us, was most terrible, most rapidly and widely destructive. Believe this, and go home and consider well what I now say, for you may be sure it is true.

Now we come to the heart. You all know where it is. It is the most wonderful little pump in the world. There is no steam-engine half so clever at its work, or so strong. There it is in every one of us, beat, beating,—all day and all night, year after year, never stopping, like a watch ticking; only it never needs to be wound up,—God winds it up once for all. It depends for its health on the state of the rest of the body, especially the brains and lungs. But all violent passions, all irregularities of living, damage it. Exposure to cold when drunk, falling asleep, as many poor wretches do, in stairs all night,—this often brings on disease of the heart; and you know it is not only dangerous to have anything the matter with the heart, it is the commonest of all causes of sudden death. It gives no warning; you drop down dead in a moment. So we may say of the bodily as well as of the moral organ, "Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."

We now come to the stomach. You all know, I dare say, where it lies! It speaks for itself. Our friends in England are very respectful to their stomachs. They make a great deal of them, and we make too little. If an Englishman is ill, all the trouble is in his stomach; if an Irishman is ill, it is in his heart, and he's "kilt entirely"; and if a Scotsman, it is in his "heed." Now, I wish I saw Scots men and women as nice and particular about their stomachs, or rather about what they put into them, as their friends in England. Indeed, so much does your genuine John Bull depend on his stomach, and its satisfaction, that we may put in his mouth the stout old lines of Prior:—