The question, "Is life worth living?" was once happily answered, "It depends upon the liver;" and it is true in both senses, for not only does happiness depend on what one gets out of life, but on good digestion. It is only the person who feels well who really enjoys life.
The person who can get up each morning able to do a day's work or have a day's enjoyment, is the one on whom we must depend for the world's work and invention. We seldom find a strong, vigorous mind in a weak body.
On the other hand, the invalid is the idle member of the family or the community. He can not find pleasure for himself nor do anything to help others, and not only that, but he must be cared for by others, thus taking the labor of the sick person himself and of his nurse. It is coming to be seen that this is a great waste of time, of money, of work, and of happiness, and people are determining that if these wastes can be stopped, it is well worth all the time and thought and money necessary to bring about the change.
People everywhere are thinking about health, and because of this, Christian Science, the Emmanuel Movement and the various sects which practise faith or mental healing have sprung up.
Hospitals and health officers are doing much for the public health. Doctors themselves are changing their ideas and are teaching us not only how to cure but how to prevent disease.
Doctors are also seeking not only to prevent disease but to find new ways of treating it. They are discarding drugs in as many cases as possible, frequently using serums in which cultures from the disease itself are used for its cure.
Health means more ability to work, more means of learning, of accomplishing great things, more pleasures in every day that is lived; and so it is as important to preserve health, in order to enjoy life, as it is to prevent death. We can realize how few persons have perfect health by noting the common salutation "How do you do?" or "How are you?"
Serious sickness is such as renders a person entirely unable to work. Benefit societies have found that the average number of days of sickness per year from each person under seventy years of age is ten, of which at least two are spent in bed.
About a million and a half people die each year in the United States, and it is estimated that twice that number, or three million persons, are constantly unable even to care for themselves. The effect of this is felt on the patient himself, in suffering, in loss of time in which he is unable to earn money, and in the amount spent for doctors, medicine, and nursing. It is felt on the family, in which the household machinery is thrown out while the wife and mother nurses the sick members of the family, or is herself too ill to work, or when the father's income stops on account of sickness.
The entire community suffers from the constant idleness of three million persons, as well as from the deaths which withdraw a still larger number of persons from actual work for a period of two to five days during the time of death and burial of the bodies of members of the family.