Never to need a physician; ever to be unconsciously guarded against all access of disease; to maintain the fair form and vigor of the body without effort, so that no depleting influences can find a hold; this is the health ideal by nature set, the standard to which the earliest progenitors of our race may doubtless have conformed, but upon which succeeding generations have sedulously turned their backs.
Philosophers have defined this physically perfect state.
Historians have immortalized it in heroic tomes.
Poets have extolled it in great epic verse.
Artists have depicted it in portraiture and tapestry.
Sculptors have expressed it in the life-like stone.
The sick have longed for it.
Saints have prayed for it and, in the search for its fabled, false elixir, alchemists have sacrificed their lives. It remained for the smug, "sober judgment" of our day to pronounce it "unattainable"—unattainable!
This, however, is a matter of small moment; for, as Whittier reminds us: "The falsehoods which we spurn today were the truths of long ago"—and although men part reluctantly with favorite—and lucrative—fallacies, and "Faith, fantastic Faith, once wedded fast to some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last," nevertheless this false belief, like so many other sapient pronouncements of human wisdom, must be subjected to final reversal.
The ideal state of health is, truly, "unattainable" when we refuse to yield obedience to the simple laws of nature—when we continuously persist in interference with her work and embarrass her with artificial substitutes, defying her august hygienic precepts by our manner of life.