Hygiene has been permitted to extinguish cholera and yellow fever, and by the grace of private benefaction it will soon banish hookworm disease which now incapacitates 2,000,000 people in the South. And may God hasten the business men to permit hygiene to banish those twin leprosies, syphilis and gonorrhea, which are important factors in the causation of insanity, crime, and pauperism, and which so fearfully wreck the lives of so many innocent women and children as well as wreck the lives of the guilty. (Applause.) Syphilis and gonorrhea are responsible for the existence of a large proportion of defectives of various kinds which fill our institutions. Let hygiene drive these plagues away, and, Indiana, instead of building another insane hospital, for another million dollars, which she must shortly do, could donate one of the five now existent to educational use of some kind. (Applause.) I strongly advise Indiana to listen to the health cranks if she wishes to save health, time and money.
SAVING VITALITY.
“Strength, Endurance and Fatigue, are the three great elements to be considered in conserving life. The measure of strength is the force a muscle can exert once, the measure of endurance is the number of times it can repeat an exertion. Fatigue is caused by fatigue poisons, which must be removed from the body during rest, principally during sleep.
Anything, therefore, which reduces strength and lessens endurance and prevents removal of fatigue is inimical to vitality conservation.”
SCIENCE OF LIVING.
The science of living begins at the mouth. Barring the taking of drugs, as a man eats and digests his foods so he is. Owing to drug taking and errors in human feeding, disease is latent in man at all times. Only a few escape sickness and pain and die natural deaths. This is not as nature would have it. Josh Billings, recovering from heart trouble caused by the excessive use of tobacco said—“Nature made us all right, we make fools of ourselves.” Other drugs which are of almost universal use and which affect heart, nerves or efficient elimination are coffee, tea, spices, cocaine, morphine, chloral and alcohol. (Applause.) All of these are drugs, and all are poisons, and all more or less disturb the vital functions, reducing vitality and efficiency.
Any departure from unstimulated nutrition works harm. Stimulated nutrition is unnatural, and perforce, is opposed to strength. Immoderate eating—feasting and gluttony—reduce vitality and induce disease with its consequent inefficiency. A very old adage says—“Most men dig their graves with their teeth.” The old time author of this was striving for the conservation of human vitality. Immoderate amounts of nitrogenous foods, exemplified in white of egg and lean meats, cause auto-intoxication. They do this by undergoing putrefaction in the digestive tract, thus making toxins, which in turn being absorbed into the body, cause the following train of ills which results in loss of vitality and efficiency. Some of the auto-intoxication or over-eating ills, are—biliousness, coated tongue, foul breath, clammy hands, clammy feet, dry lusterless hair, putty complexion, dulled hearing, dulled vision, dulled taste, dulled smell, early loss of memory, loss of continuous thought and attention, headaches, vertigo, dyspepsia, loss of strength, rheumatism, insomnia, fugitive pains and aches, hysteria, nervousness, nightmare, irregular heart, shortness of breath, brittle nails, dry harsh skin, cancer and premature old age of the doddering and slobbering kind. (Applause.)
Until we learn and practically apply the science of living we cannot attain over 50 or 60 per cent. efficiency and must continue to live lives of sickness, pain and disease, and die before the natural duration of life has one-half expired; and if this does not hinder and delay the conservation of natural resources nothing will.
“Over-fatigue, is a cause of loss of vitality. The present working day from a physiological standpoint is too long. Over-work better expressed by the term over-fatigue, starts a vicious circle leading to the craving of means for deadening fatigue, thus inducing drug habits and drunkenness.”
“Experiments in reducing the length of the working day show a great improvement in the physical and mental efficiency of laborers and results in an increased output sufficient to pay the difference. However, the great justification of the shorter day is found in the interests of the race and nation, not the employer. Public safety requires, in order to avoid railway collisions and other accidents, the prevention of long hours; lack of sleep and undue fatigue is quite as great as the waste from serious illness. A typical succession of events is, first, fatigue, then “colds,” then tuberculosis, then death. In order to prevent in the beginning this increasing line of destructive agencies, undue fatigue must be prevented.”