The accumulation of vital force is a possibility if natural and vital food is selected.
The Great Healer. All the medicines in the world are as the small dust of the balance, potentially, when weighed against this Life-force—which "healeth all our diseases and redeemeth our life from destruction." Its therapeutic phenomena are truly wonderful.
When our bodies are invaded by malevolent microbes, the defensive corpuscles within us, if in fit condition, destroy them. But if not fed with those elements which are needful for their sustenance, they soon "run down"—just as we ourselves get "below par." We are then liable to become the prey of those ceaseless microscopic enemies that are ever ready to pounce upon the unfit.
If our corpuscles are weaker than the invading foes, no drugs can save us—we are doomed. Hence the importance of keeping ourselves and our nerve centres well charged and in vigorous condition.
How to Accumulate Vitality.To accumulate vitality our food must contain all the chemical elements which we need. None must be permanently omitted. If, for instance, we entirely exclude organic phosphorus from the food of a man of great intellect, he will, in due time, be reduced to imbecility. This is obtained in such foods as cheese, milk, wholemeal bread, peas, apples, strawberries, and bananas.
We must live by method, and take some trouble. Nature's greatest gift is not to be obtained without thought or effort. We must eat, breathe, and live wisely; and the closer to Nature we get, the better it will be for us.
The habit of deep breathing, like that of living much in the open air, yields important results. The atmosphere consists of oxygen and nitrogen—the very elements of which our bodies are chiefly constructed. Life and vigour can be inhaled, but few persons have learnt the art.
Cheerfulness tends to promote the assimilation of food. Exercise—of an intelligent and healthful sort—is needful to make the life-current pulsate through our tissues. Without it our organs do not get properly nourished and rebuilt: stiffness and atrophy set in. Worry and care must be banished, and unwise or excessive expenditure of nerve force avoided; for these things deplete the human storage battery of its vitality.